This is an accepted version of this page
Marian Dawkins | |
|---|---|
 Dawkins in 2014 | |
| Born | Marian Ellina Stamp (1945-02-13)13 February 1945 (age 81) Hereford, England |
| Education | Queen's College, London[2] |
| Alma mater | Somerville College, Oxford |
| Known for | Animal welfare science |
| Spouse | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | University of Oxford |
| Thesis | The Mechanism of Hunting by 'Searching Image' in Birds (1970) |
| Doctoral advisor | Niko Tinbergen[1] |
| Website | www |
Marian Stamp Dawkins (bornMarian Ellina Stamp; 13 February 1945)[2][3] is a Britishbiologist and professor ofethology at theUniversity of Oxford.[4] Her research interests includevision in birds,animal signalling,behavioural synchrony,animal consciousness andanimal welfare.[5][6][7]
Dawkins was educated atQueen's College, London[2] andSomerville College, Oxford,[2] where she earned bachelor's and PhD (1970) degrees. Her doctoral research was supervised byNiko Tinbergen.[1]
Dawkins was appointed alecturer in zoology in 1977 and in 1998 was madeprofessor of animal behaviour. She is currently (2014) Head of the Animal Behaviour Research Group and is the Director of theJohn Krebs Field Laboratory.[8]
Dawkins has written extensively on animal behaviour and issues ofanimal welfare. Along with other academics in the field, such as Ian Duncan,[9] Dawkins promoted the argument that animal welfare is about thefeelings of animals.[10] This approach indicates the belief that animals should be considered as sentient beings. Dawkins wrote, "Let us not mince words: Animal welfare involves the subjective feelings of animals.[11]
In 1989, Dawkins published a study in which she filmedhens from above while they performed common behaviours (e.g. turning, standing, wing-stretching). From these films, she calculated the amount of floor-space required by the hens during these behaviours and compared this to the amount of floor-space available inbattery cages. She was able to show that many of these common behaviours were highly restricted, or prevented, in battery cages.[12]
In 1990, she contributed to a paper in which she developed her ideas regarding how to assess animal welfare by asking questions of animals. She proposed usingpreference tests andconsumer demand studies to ask what animals prefer (e.g. space, social contact) and how highly motivated they are for these. She argued that animals were more likely to suffer if they were not provided with resources for which they are highly motivated.[11]
Central to her most recent (2012) view on animal welfare is scepticism about whether science can establish that animals haveconsciousness and therefore its role in definition and measurement of animal welfare and suffering. Instead, her view is that good animal welfare rests on determining the needs and wants of animals, which do not require that they are conscious.[13] These theses are presented in her bookWhy Animals Matter: Animal Consciousness, Animal Welfare, and Human Well-being (2012).[14] Her views on animal consciousness have been criticised by evolutionary biologistMarc Bekoff, who argues that she too readily rejectsanthropomorphic research on animals.[15][16] She responded to the criticism by stating her position as "wrongly interpreted", and says that "my concern is to make the case for animal emotions as watertight as possible and thereby to strengthen it. That is the way science progresses and always has."[17][18]
Dawkins was awarded theRSPCA/British Society for Animal Protection prize in 1991, Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour'sNiko Tinbergen Medal in 2009, and the World Poultry Science Association Robert Fraser Gordon Medal in 2011.[8]
Dawkins was appointedCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the2014 New Year Honours for services to animal welfare.[19] In 2014, she was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) for “substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge”.[20]
She was born in Hereford to Arthur Maxwell Stamp and (Alice) Mary Stamp (née Richards).[2]
On 19 August 1967, she married fellow ethologistRichard Dawkins in the Protestant church inAnnestown,County Waterford, Ireland.[2][21] They divorced in 1984. She remains known as Marian Stamp Dawkins.[2]
“All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available underCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --"Terms, conditions and policies".Archived from the original on 11 November 2016. Retrieved11 September 2018.
This article incorporatestext available under theCC BY 4.0 license.
