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Contact
details
Research Centre for Animal Welfare
Department of Production Animal Medicine
P.O. Box 57
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
+358 50 544 5840
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Research
Ongoing research projects that
I am involved in, each of them at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of
the
University of Helsinki, Finland:
New
innovations for environmental enrichment on pig farms. Funded
by the Ministry of Agriculture in Finland, we aim at
developing
cost-effective solutions for improving living conditions of pigs and
reducing abnormal behaviours such as tail biting.
The effect of early enrichment on the behaviour of
piglets and pigs.
We are testing whether providing piglets during their first weeks
of life with material to chew on and root in will have a lasting effect
in reducing later tail
biting and other harmful behaviours. The project is part
of a Nordic research programme on tail
biting in pigs.
Interaction between the sow and piglets.
We are testing whether providing piglets with chewing and rooting
materials as above reduces teat wounds and other piglet-induced
lesions in the mother sow.
Vetformula: a cross-disciplinary project
between pharmaceutics and ethology, in
which we aim at developing new ways to make oral medication more
acceptable to cats.
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Books
and science journalism
For the wider audience, I
occasionally
write popular science articles and non-fiction books on animals and
nature. Most of my writing has been in the Finnish
language. Those who can read it may like to take a look at a selection
of previously published magazine
stories or brief descriptions of books.
There is one English-language book, though: The Baltic Sea. Discovering the sea
of life, on biodiversity in the
Baltic Sea, available online via the above link.
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Awards
Presenting of science to the
wider audience has been
recognized with the following:
The Tiedetoimittaja (Science Writer) award, by the
Finnish Association of Science Editors and Journalists, in 2008.
The book Laulujoutsenen perintö (The Heritage of
the Whooping Swan),
chronicling the development of nature conservation in Finland, received
the Vuoden Luontokirja (Finnish Nature Book of the
Year) award in
2008, and was one of the finalists for Tieto-Finlandia,
the country's
most prestigious non-fiction award.
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Science
meets working elephants in Asia
Working
Elephant
Programme
of Asia (WEPA) is a non-profit organization
providing courses and tutoring in
science-based, animal-friendly methods of elephant training and
management for those professionally involved with working elephants in
Asia.
The reason why I initiated this programme was to constructively give an
alternative to the existing
methods, which
were developed before modern animal behaviour science was available and
thus involve components in which elephants are subjected to pain and
injury during training
and handling.
The new methods have been rapidly embraced in Nepal, the first country
we are working in. Local professionals appreciate the faster learning
rate and better obedience of elephants achieved by the new methods.
Occupational safety has also improved, as there are no more incidences
of panic by the elephant in training.
The Nepal project has mainly been funded by the Finnish and Nepali
offices of the conservation organization WWF, and by the World Society
for the Protection of Animals, WSPA. Part of the funding comes from
private donors.
The field work in Nepal is now continued by HELP
Foundation
(Human-Elephant Learning Programs), an Australian-run organization that
was founded by using WEPA as a model. WEPA will focus on the
development of further novel networks of cooperation to promote
improved handling and housing of elephants.
The results in Nepal have attracted
interest in other Asian countries, and our aim for the future is to
also be available in other countries of the elephant range in
Asia, such as in India and Thailand.
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