Due to the remarkable success of the Research Topic 'Reviews in Animal Welfare' and the rapidly evolving subject area, we are pleased to launch Volume II for this topic. Animal welfare research has significantly evolved over the years. Currently, there is a comprehensive body of work regarding pet species and farm animals; however, exotic and wildlife species still remain under-researched. Despite the advancements, significant gaps persist within this domain, such as effective methods for measuring positive welfare and synthesizing diverse emotional and experiential states across an animal's lifespan. The recent introduction of new technologies offers promising avenues for collecting more reliable welfare data, yet the validation of these tools remains scant.This Research Topic aims to amass a wealth of reviews and original research papers on animal welfare concerning a broad spectrum of species, from pets to wildlife and everything in between. We are particularly interested in synthesizing the expansive literature to delineate the well-examined areas of animal welfare and spotlight the neglected ones. The ultimate goal is to map out the distribution of scientific focus within the field and uncover underrepresented topics that require further investigation.We invite contributions that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes:• Methodologies for measuring positive welfare• Comparative welfare assessments across different species• Technological innovations in welfare monitoring• Validation of animal welfare assessment tools• Longitudinal studies on animal welfare
Due to the remarkable success of the Research Topic 'Reviews in Animal Welfare' and the rapidly evolving subject area, we are pleased to launch Volume II for this topic. Animal welfare research has significantly evolved over the years. Currently, there is a comprehensive body of work regarding pet species and farm animals; however, exotic and wildlife species still remain under-researched. Despite the advancements, significant gaps persist within this domain, such as effective methods for measuring positive welfare and synthesizing diverse emotional and experiential states across an animal's lifespan. The recent introduction of new technologies offers promising avenues for collecting more reliable welfare data, yet the validation of these tools remains scant.This Research Topic aims to amass a wealth of reviews and original research papers on animal welfare concerning a broad spectrum of species, from pets to wildlife and everything in between. We are particularly interested in synthesizing the expansive literature to delineate the well-examined areas of animal welfare and spotlight the neglected ones. The ultimate goal is to map out the distribution of scientific focus within the field and uncover underrepresented topics that require further investigation.We invite contributions that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes:• Methodologies for measuring positive welfare• Comparative welfare assessments across different species• Technological innovations in welfare monitoring• Validation of animal welfare assessment tools• Longitudinal studies on animal welfare