


They also limited their analysis to adult animals, due to a serious lack of data on juvenile mortality causes. Cause of death in wild terrestrial vertebratesĬollins and Kays ( 2011) conducted the first systematic review of cause-specific mortality rates in mammals, selecting only studies that used small radio trackers to monitor animals and document their deaths in a timely manner. Here, I will give an overview of what research in this field has taught us so far about how wild animals die and highlight gaps that seem especially important for welfare biology. The overwhelming majority of the research that does exist is focused on land-dwelling mammals and birds, and primarily on cases where understanding what animals are dying from is instrumental to preventing the extinction of their species. Cause of death has not received sufficient research attention relative to its significance to wild animal welfare. Previously, I wrote about approaches to studying wild animals’ causes of death, with the goal of making work in this field maximally useful for understanding wild animal welfare.
