Dr Emmeline Howarth
Programme Leader for Animal Behaviour
Dr Howarth is programme leader for Animal Behaviour BSc and a lecturer in Animal Welfare Science focusing on domestic and captive species in particular, primates and companion animals. During her BSc in Animal Science at Newcastle University, she completed a dissertation project on cage mate behaviour in captive rhesus macaques following biomedical procedures at the Comparative Biology Centre.
Following this, she attended the University of Edinburgh to complete a MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare where she completed a project in Qualitative Behaviour Assessment in primates. While in Edinburgh, Dr Howarth worked as a presenter at Edinburgh Zoo where she was able to work with a range of species including penguins, rhino, and chimpanzees.
During her PhD, she worked closely with rhesus macaques at the Medical Research Council's Centre for Macaques (https://cfm.har.mrc.ac.uk/), training them to collect cognitive data as well as urine and saliva samples.
Dr Howarth leads level 5 and 6 modules within the Animal Behaviour and Animal Behaviour & Welfare degree programmes focusing on domestic and captive animal welfare, ethics, behaviour and management. She is also responsible for a level 7 module in human-animal interaction within the MSc Animal Behaviour programme and teaches lecturers on several other modules including data analysis, stress and pain in companion animals and fish and the ethics of animal training.
Dr Howarth's PhD research focused on the validation of attention bias as a novel non-invasive method of welfare assessment in captive rhesus macaques. Attention bias looks at eye movements to emotional stimuli and, in humans, we know that these biases in attention reliably map onto physiological and self-reported measures of affect.
The project aimed to validate attention bias by triangulation with established behavioural indices, contextual data, and physiological and genetic correlates. She is interested in expanding her research focus into other areas of captive and companion animal welfare including dog control measures in public spaces.
Howarth ERI, Szott ID, Witham CL, Wilding CS & Bethell EJ, 2023. Genetic polymorphisms in the serotonin, dopamine and opioid pathways influence social attention in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). PLoS One, 18(8).
Howarth ERI, Kemp C, Thatcher HR, Szott ID, Farningham DAH, Witham CL, Holmes A, Semple S & Bethell EJ, 2021. Developing and validating attention bias tools for assessing trait and state affect in animals: A worked example with Macaca mulatta. Applied Animal Behaviour, 234, 105198.
Howarth ERI , 2017. Attention bias: A new tool for welfare assessment in captive rhesus macaques. Primate Eye, Primate Society of Great Britain 50th Anniversary.
JOURNAL REVIEWING / REFEREEING
PLoS ONE
28 Feb 2024