Sébastien Goumon, Ph.D
Animal Behaviour and Welfare
About me
Hi there and welcome! I am an applied ethologist currently working as a research scientist at at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH in Zürich (Switzerland). I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Animal Sciences in Prague (Czech Republic). I received a Ph.D (doctorate) from the department of animal science of Laval University (Québec, Canada) in collaboration with the Prairie Swine Centre inc. (Saskatchewan, Canada) I also received a MSc. in animal science with specialisation in animal welfare from the National agronomic institute of Paris (France).
Research Interests
The focus of my research projects (past and present) has been on farm animal welfare with a particular emphasis on behavioral and physiological stress reactivity in various conditions (transportation, farrowing pen), understanding of social behavior (social preferences, prosociality, emotional contagion) and development of new methods of assessment of investigation of emotional state (thermography) and stress reactivity (biomarkers).
I am currently focusing my research on affective states and prosociality, as in my opinion, these two fields of research are key topics in the understanding of animal social behaviour and will help us to significantly improve the welfare of farm animals. I am very much interested in investigating specific topics such as social preferences, cooperation, social support and empathy and their ultimate (evolutionary advantages) and proximate factors (e.g hormone patterns, familiarity, genetics, friendship, age, sex, dominance and affiliative behaviours: social nosing, play and grooming). I am also working on refining the housing of farrowing and lactating sows.
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Animal behaviour and welfare research group
