Chris Sherwin

Christopher M. Sherwin (1 December 1962 – 18 July 2017) was an English veterinary scientist and senior research fellow at the University of Bristol Veterinary School in Lower Langford, Somerset. He specialised in applied ethology, the study of the behaviour of animals in the context of their interactions with humans, and of how to balance the animals' needs with the demands placed on them by humans.

Sherwin became known for his work on the welfare of animals in zoos, farms and laboratories, and in particular for his research into the behaviour of laboratory mice.

Early life and education Sherwin was born in Bradford, England, and spent several years in Australia, where he earned his BSc in veterinary biology from Murdoch University in Perth. In 1987 he obtained his PhD, also from Murdoch University, for a thesis entitled Shading behaviour in sheep: The influence of social and thermal factors.

Career Research overview Sherwin became a junior research fellow at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, where he wrote about electronic tags and ear damage in pigs before returning to England in 1990. That year he joined the Animal Welfare and Behaviour group at the University of Bristol Veterinary School to work on enriched housing for laying hens.

Poultry and laboratory birds Sherwin's studies included examining the behaviour of birds on farms and in laboratories. He wrote about housing for poultry used in meat and egg production. Between 1998 and 2001 he published 11 papers on turkeys, which included examining the effect of lighting on their welfare; his research suggested that turkeys prefer brighter lights than those in commercial facilities. In the early 2000s, he was a member of the European Council's Working Group for Birds, which wrote provisions for birds for the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes. In a study for the RSPCA's "Freedom Food" label in 2009, he led a team from Bristol University that investigated stocking densities of hens used for eggs. In 2010, Sherwin found a high incidence of broken bones in hens housed in a type of cage that was banned in the European Union soon afterwards.

Elephants in zoos From 2005 to 2007 Sherwin was part of a team funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the RSPCA, BIAZA, and IFAW to write a report concerning captive elephants: The Welfare, Housing and Husbandry of Elephants in UK Zoos (2008), about the 77 elephants then kept in 13 British zoos. Sherwin told the BBC that almost half the elephants engaged in behaviour not seen in the wild, such as pacing, retracing their steps, and repeatedly swaying their trunks, which "almost certainly indicates they're in an environment which is inappropriate for their needs". In Sherwin's view, elephants could be kept in zoos with the correct housing and care, but not in the numbers seen at that time.

Invertebrate pain

Another of Sherwin's research interests was the complexity of invertebrate behaviour and their capacity to suffer pain. Mike Mendl, a colleague of Sherwin's, wrote that Sherwin anticipated the interest in insect emotion and consciousness by over a decade.

Sherwin reasoned that insects had preferences, habits, and memories, and could experience suffering as a "negative mental state". When deciding whether an animal can suffer, he wrote in 2001, we compare its responses to those of evolutionarily higher animals, an argument by analogy, and find that invertebrates "often behave in a strikingly analogous manner to vertebrates". (Sherwin (Animal Welfare, 1 February 2001): "Suffering is a negative mental state—a private experience—and, as such, it cannot be measured directly.) When assessing the capacity of an animal to experience suffering, we often compare the similarity of its responses with those of 'higher' animals, conceptualized in the principle of argument-by-analogy. By closely examining the responses of invertebrates, it can be seen that they often behave in a strikingly analogous manner to vertebrates. In this paper, I discuss published studies that show that invertebrates such as cockroaches, flies and slugs have short- and long-term memory; have age effects on memory; have complex spatial, associative and social learning; perform appropriately in preference tests and consumer demand studies; exhibit behavioural and physiological responses indicative of pain; and, apparently, experience learned helplessness. The similarity of these responses to those of vertebrates may indicate a level of consciousness or suffering that is not normally attributed to invertebrates." He told a conference in 2000: If a chimp pulls its hand away after an electric shock, we say she presumably must have felt an analogous subjective experience to what we call pain. But cockroaches, slugs and snails—which are not protected by legislation—also reacted in the same way, while tests on flies showed they could associate a smell with receiving an electric shock. If it is a chimp we say it feels pain, if a fly we don't. Why?

Laboratory mice Sherwin's most influential research was on the behaviour and welfare of laboratory mice. In one highly cited study,

He went on to conduct extensive studies on laboratory cage design, showing that mice kept in ordinary cages chose to drink more of an anxiety-reducing drug than mice housed in larger cages with nesting material, a nest box, and a running wheel, where they could burrow and be with other mice. In another study, he demonstrated that mice need to engage in burrowing behaviour. Laboratory mice spent the same amount of time burrowing whether or not they were supplied with ready-made burrows. Sherwin used burrows constructed by the same mouse in an earlier part of the experiment, thereby addressing the argument that the mouse continued to burrow only because the ready-made burrows were inadequate.

Housing and husbandry Sherwin wrote in 2004 that the behaviour and health of laboratory animals given standard housing and care are frequently abnormal, which may reduce the value of the data obtained from them. In 2007 he argued, in a letter to Nature, that it was good science to include details about the handling and housing of laboratory animals in published papers, because factors such as cage size and flooring can influence metabolism, temperature, blood pressure and feeding behaviour.

Other work From 1998 to 2001 Sherwin sat on the Council of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE). He later chaired the ISAE's Animal Ethics Committee, and was the lead author in 2003 of its ethical guidelines. In 2006 he was the lead organizer of the 40th International Congress of the ISAE at Bristol. He also served as secretary of the Ethical Committee of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour, He was a member of the Joint Working Group on Refinement (JWGR), set up by the British Veterinary Association's Animal Welfare Foundation, FRAME, the RSPCA and UFAW, which produced a report on laboratory birds in 2001.

In 2005 he sat on the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) working group on laboratory animals. Sherwin's team, led by Donald Broom, addressed the protection of invertebrates and animal fetuses. The assessment was adopted by the EFSA's Panel on Animal Health and Welfare in November 2005, which decided that animal fetuses should be given anaesthesia and analgesia for procedures that would cause pain in the newborn of the same species.

After his retirement, Sherwin became an editor on Wikipedia, where he wrote nearly fifty articles. including:

Sherwin, Chris M. (2002). "Comfortable quarters for mice in research institutions". In V. Reinhardt & A. Reinhardt (eds.). Comfortable Quarters for Laboratory Animals, 9th edition. Washington, DC: Animal Welfare Institute, pp. 6–7. Sherwin, C. M. (2005). "Turkeys: Behaviour, Management and Well-Being", in Wilson G. Pond and Alan W. Bell (eds.). Encyclopedia of Animal Science. New York: Marcel Dekker, pp. 847–852.

Sherwin, Chris (2010). "The Husbandry and Welfare of Non-Traditional Laboratory Rodents", in R. Hubrecht and J. Kirkwood (eds.). The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory and Other Research Animals, 8th edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 359–369.