Oct 20, 2026 · 18 min · 9 segments
For over a century, our scientific understanding of animals has undergone a massive paradigm shift. We’ve moved away from viewing animals merely as biological machines to recognising them as…
Daniel MillsHostMillie JonesHost
His core argument was that you cannot lock a living, breathing creature in a tiny, restrictive box because, to quote him directly, he said, life is action.
He basically argued that confinement actively prevented their natural behavioural needs.
I mean, he is essentially predicting the modern scientific concept of environmental enrichment.
He didn't have the terminology of modern ethology, but he saw the mechanical breakdown of the animal.
And then just a few years later, in 1888, you have another practitioner named Mayhew who documented crib-biting in horses.
That is the compulsive behaviour where a horse grabs a fence or a stall door with its teeth and aggressively sucks in air, right?
I want to pause on that because the biology of that connection is just fascinating to me.
Because horses evolved to graze almost continuously, which means their stomachs are constantly producing acid.
His core argument was that you cannot lock a living, breathing creature in a tiny, restrictive box because, to quote him directly, he said, life is action.
He basically argued that confinement actively prevented their natural behavioural needs.
I mean, he is essentially predicting the modern scientific concept of environmental enrichment.
He didn't have the terminology of modern ethology, but he saw the mechanical breakdown of the animal.
And then just a few years later, in 1888, you have another practitioner named Mayhew who documented crib-biting in horses.
That is the compulsive behaviour where a horse grabs a fence or a stall door with its teeth and aggressively sucks in air, right?
I want to pause on that because the biology of that connection is just fascinating to me.
Because horses evolved to graze almost continuously, which means their stomachs are constantly producing acid.
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