Coyote (Canis latrans) numbers are increasing in urban areas, leading to more frequent human-coyote interactions. Rarely, and particularly when coyotes have become habituated to humans, conflicts occur. Effective education about urban coyotes and how to prevent habituation reduces conflict. Citizen science, in the form of online education, can be used to engage and educate city dwellers about urban coyotes. In this research, I explore Portland Metropolitan Area (PMA) residents' baseline experiences with, and attitudes toward, urban coyotes. Next, I investigate citizen science as a tool for education. Using the Portland Urban Coyote Project (PUCP), a citizen science project, as a case study, I investigate people's experiences with citizen science and evaluate whether attitudes and knowledge about coyotes changes after an interactive online educational tool. Most participants had seen a coyote at least once, were generally positive about coyotes, and were well-informed about basic facts. Participants who completed a tutorial that provided basic information about coyotes and dispelled common myths, showed higher knowledge scores and more positive, research-based attitudes. These results suggest that educational tools in citizen science projects can be effective for providing information and shaping attitudes about urban coyotes. Increased public access to education about how to live safely with coyotes is an important tool for proactive management. Online educational tools associated with citizen science projects are a viable option for efficient, inexpensive management of urban coyote populations.

This thesis demonstrates the ways that nonhuman characters in the literature of Elizabeth Bishop and Gerald Vizenor subvert anthropocentrism, thereby contributing to an ongoing reconsideration of political and ethical approaches to species discourse. Jacques Derrida's work on the philosophical questions regarding nonhuman animals is combined with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's postcolonial perspective on "subaltern speaking" and representation, while Gerald Vizenor's theory of "survivance" provides the theoretical grounding for approaching literary representations of animals within this project. The authors in this study challenge false hierarchical species divisions by constructing fictional spaces that imagine the perspectives of nonhuman beings, consider the importance interspecies relationships, and recontextualize the voices and communication of nonhumans. In providing these counter-narratives, these authors establish a relationship with readers that invites them to reconsider the ramifications of their own ideology of species, reminding them that theory and practice must coexist. / by Tiffany J. Frost. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-09-27T12:27:23Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Andréa Lorenzon Petenucci.pdf: 659972 bytes, checksum: 620a117ef5c6b4ae5cf63cce34b54df9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-27T12:27:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Andréa Lorenzon Petenucci.pdf: 659972 bytes, checksum: 620a117ef5c6b4ae5cf63cce34b54df9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The dissertation has no abstract / Introdução: a educação assistida por animais (EAA) visa difundir a utilização de animais como recurso pedagógico. Diferentes espécies são utilizadas, porém o cão é o mais frequente. A leitura assistida por cães é a intervenção com o maior número de pesquisas na EAA e os resultados apontam para melhora no desempenho de leitura de alunos na presença de cães terapeutas. Objetivo: descrever os efeitos da EAA na motivação e no desempenho em leitura de um grupo de alunos do 5º ano do Ensino Fundamental. Método: trata-se de uma pesquisa experimental, de intervenção, de natureza qualitativa. Casuística:seis sujeitos com idade média de 10,9 anos, 2 do sexo masculino e 4 do sexo feminino de uma sala de aula do 5º ano de uma escola municipal. Procedimento: cada sujeito participou de 06 sessões semanais de leitura em voz alta com duração de 20 minutos, as cinco primeiras com e a última sem a presença do cão. Pré sessões, os sujeitos responderam individual e oralmente ao questionário para coleta de dados relativos ao contato com animais e atividades de leitura. Pós sessões, responderam oral e individualmente ao questionário sobre as possíveis relações entre a EAA e leitura. As respostas foram descritas para traçar os perfis individuais e as sessões foram analisadas, criando categorias de análise de conteúdo à posteriori, de acordo com a incidência e a relevância dos conteúdos em relação ao objetivo da pesquisa. Resultados: Segundo a autopercepção dos 6 sujeitos, suas habilidades de leitura melhoraram após as sessões. 4 dos 6 participantes, passou a ler com mais frequência. Conclusão: Os resultados obtidos sugerem que a Educação Assistida por Animais pode impactar beneficamente o desempenho de estudantes por operar, de forma positiva, na autopercepção dos mesmos frente às habilidades de leitura

Fung, Suk Chun. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-337). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

"June 2003." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-301). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

For humans and non-human primates (NHPs) the face represents a particularly important source of social information providing a means of conspecific recognition and cues to personal details including sex, age, and emotional state. The human face may also be fundamental in the transmission to conspecifics of other forms of socially relevant information including the display of facial traits associated with sexual attraction and mate choice. A wealth of experimental literature indicates that humans display robust preferences for certain facial traits associated with facial attractiveness including preferences for bilateral facial symmetry, facial averageness and sexually dimorphic faces and facial features. It is thought that these preferences have evolved via sexual selection, and may be adaptive, due to the role that these specific facial features play in reliably signalling to others the possession of heritable genetic quality or ‘good genes’. Therefore, from an evolutionary perspective, it is possible that certain facial preferences may represent an evolutionary adaptation for the selection of potential mate quality. However, despite similarities between human and NHP face processing and recognition abilities, the shared evolutionary history and social importance of faces to primates in general, and the potential importance of these preferences in the mate choice decisions of NHPs, very little research has investigated the extent to which NHPs display comparable preferences to humans for these specific facial traits. Consequently, the aim of the following thesis was to comparatively assess the general and more specific preferences that humans and NHPs display for faces and for traits associated with facial attractiveness. Data was compiled from preference studies examining the visual preferences displayed by two species of NHP (brown capuchins (Cebus apella) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)) for conspecific faces manipulated for those facial traits associated with attractiveness, and from a single study of brown capuchins examining their general visual preferences for various types of facial information. Comparative preference studies were also conducted upon human adults and infants examining the visual and declared preferences that they display for manipulations of facial attractiveness. Data showed that despite possessing general preferences for certain faces and facial information, generally NHPs displayed no significant preferences for those facial traits thought to influences judgements of attractiveness in humans. Possible reasons for this absence of preference for these particular facial traits and the evolutionary implications of these findings are discussed.

No description available.

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The aims of this research were to describe in rich phenomenological detail the recollected childhood experiences described by three South African adults of growing up with animals in the context of a traditionally African cultural perspective in South Africa; as well as to document the emotional, physical and social effects of inter-species relationships as described by these participants, in order to explore and situate these experiences in relation to broad international perspectives on the contribution of animals to human development. The question of how these described experiences correlate with broad international perspectives on the contribution of animals to human development comprised the hermeneutic of the study. Here it was found that the experiences of these South African individuals were generally in keeping with the trends found in the literature. Participants attributed to their childhood relationships with animals a variety of benefits. These benefits occur on a range of levels, from the physical to the cognitive, and the psychosocial. The emotional attachment of the participants to animals with whom they had interacted in childhood correlated with the nature of interspecies relationships as anticipated by the literature. Cultural differences in the conceptualisation of inter-species relationships, between western and traditionally African ideologies, appeared to influence the moral and ethical positions assumed by the participants, while the subjective nature of the described attachment between participants and animals remains qualitatively similar across cultures, when explored in relation to international research. The similarities between the experiences of the participants and international research findings lend credence to Wilson’s hypothesis that all human beings are potentially able to connect in deep and profound ways with their natural environment, and that this connection contributes to the development of social and cognitive skills, as well as constituting emotional support and stability. The research concludes with an examination of its own limitations and suggestions are made for further research.

This work examines the use of nonhuman animals in the farming industry and seeks to understand why this practice takes place and what supports its continuation. The research is approached from a critical realist perspective and after a description of past and current practices in the industry, it uses abduction and retroduction to determine the essential conditions for the continuation of the phenomenon of nonhuman animal farming. One essential condition is found to be the existence of negative discourses relating to nonhuman animals and this aspect is examined in more detail by analyzing a corpus of texts from a farming magazine using Critical Discourse Analysis. Major discourses which were found to be present were those of production, science and slavery which construct the nonhumans respectively as objects of scientific investigation, as production machines and as slaves. A minor discourse of achievement relating to the nonhumans was also present. Further analysis of linguistic features examined the way in which the nonhumans are socially constructed in the discourses. Drawing on work in experimental psychology by Millgram, Zimbardo and Bandura it was found that the effects of these discourses fulfil many of the conditions for bringing about moral disengagement in people thus explaining why billions of people are able to support animal farming in various ways even though what happens in the phenomenon is contrary to their basic ethical and moral beliefs.