Jennifer Crawley
jennifer.a.crawley@utu.fi ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5509-652X |
Human-animal coexistance, Evolutionary biology, Conservation Biology
My general interests lie in human-animal interactions, how they influence animal welfare, and how we can measure these impacts.
Specifically, my PhD is studying elephants working in the timber industry in Myanmar, the largest semi-captive population of Asian elephants in the world, focusing on how the close relationship that they have with the men that they work with (their mahouts) impacts their well-being. Our findings have highlighted changes to the mahout profession in recent decades, with current mahouts being younger and less experienced than in the past, changing elephants more frequently. I specifically focus on how these changing relationships may be impacting the health, behaviour and general well-being of the elephants.
I am also interested in certain times of conflict within this relationship, looking at the impacts of the taming procedure that elephant calves go through in this population, a time of increased mortality with the aim to improve both population viability and individual welfare.
I have been lucky during my PhD to co-supervise multiple Masters students spanning different fields, from veterinary science through to behaviour and cognition. These projects included using behavioural assessments of Asian elephants both to inform animal welfare and as indicators to the quality of relationships between mahouts and elephants, and assessing elephant calf health during and following the taming procedure.
- Handler familiarity helps to improve working performance during novel situations in semi-captive Asian elephants (2021)
- Scientific Reports
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Influence of handler relationships and experience on health parameters, glucocorticoid responses and behaviour of semi-captive Asian elephants (2021)
- Conservation Physiology
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - The impact of human relationships on semi-captive Asian elephant health and welfare (2021) Crawley Jennie
(Doctoral dissertation (article) (G5)) - Evaluating the Reliability of Non-Specialist Observers in the Behavioural Assessment of Semi-Captive Asian Elephant Welfare (2020)
- Animals
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Taming age mortality in semi-captive Asian elephants (2020)
- Scientific Reports
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Investigating changes within the handling system of the largest semi-captive population of Asian elephants (2019)
- PLoS ONE
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Is bigger better? The relationship between size and reproduction in female Asian elephants (2017)
- Journal of Evolutionary Biology
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - How big is it really? Assessing the efficacy of indirect estimates of body size in Asian elephants (2016)
- PLoS ONE
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Testing storage methods of faecal samples for subsequent measurement of helminth egg numbers in the domestic horse (2016)
- Veterinary Parasitology
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Distinguishing between determinate and indeterminate growth in a long-lived mammal (2015)
- BMC Evolutionary Biology
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1))