Victoria A Braithwaite was a British scientist who was a Professor of Animal Behaviour and Cognition at Pennsylvania State University.
17 Facts About Victoria Braithwaite
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Victoria Braithwaite was the first person to demonstrate that fish feel pain, which impacted animal welfare research and changed guidelines for the treatment of fish in laboratories and fisheries in the UK, Europe, and Canada.
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Victoria Braithwaite did not take this advice, and eventually completed her undergraduate degree in zoology and doctoral degree, supported by a Christopher Welch scholarship, at the Somerville College, Oxford.
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Victoria Braithwaite's thesis considered the visual information used by homing pigeons to return to their nests.
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Victoria Braithwaite demonstrated that birds fly home faster when they see their surroundings before being released.
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Victoria Braithwaite joined the University of Glasgow where she studied the cognitive abilities of salmon.
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Victoria Braithwaite showed that fish which live in stable environments use visual markers for guides, whereas fish that live in rivers learn directions using sequences.
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Victoria Braithwaite's research was the first to show that an animal's cognition is shaped by the worlds in which they live.
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Whilst it was well understood that chickens and sheep experienced pain, before Victoria Braithwaite it was not known whether or not fish did too.
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Victoria Braithwaite demonstrated fish felt pain using a series of experiments, the first of which included showing that fish contained the correct anatomy to detect pain.
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Victoria Braithwaite showed that fish produce pain-killing opioids in the same way that mammals do.
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Victoria Braithwaite then investigated whether or not they responded to stimuli, and demonstrated that these receptors feel bodily damage and that fish behaviour is different when they are exposed to an unpleasant stimulus.
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Victoria Braithwaite then demonstrated that fish that had been exposed to an unpleasant stimulus, for example, vinegar, behaved differently when made to perform tasks after they had taken human painkillers.
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Victoria Braithwaite's work changed protocols regulating the ways fish are treated in laboratories and fisheries in the UK, Europe, and Canada.
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Victoria Braithwaite joined Pennsylvania State University in 2007, where she was appointed Professor of Fisheries and Biology.
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Whilst a visiting fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study in 2015, Victoria Braithwaite analysed the inferences that could be made about animal pain and other emotional states.
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Victoria Braithwaite was offered the directorship of the IGB Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in 2018, but was unable to assume the position.