Wild animals experience different challenges and opportunities as they mature, and this variety of experiences can lead to different levels of welfare characterizing the day-to-day lives of individuals of different ages. At the same time, most wild animals who are born do not survive to adulthood. Individuals who die as juveniles do not simply experience a homogeneous fraction of the lifetimes of older members of their species; rather, their truncated lives may be characterized by very different levels of welfare. Here, I propose the concept of welfare expectancy as a framework for quantifying wild animal welfare at a population level, given individual-level data on average welfare with respect to age. This concept fits conveniently alongside methods of analysis already used in population ecology, such as demographic sensitivity analysis, and is applicable to evaluating the welfare consequences of human interventions and natural pressures that disproportionately affect individuals of different ages. In order to understand better and improve the state of wild animal welfare, more attention should be directed towards young animals and the particular challenges they face.

中文翻译：

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量化野生动物福利时考虑年龄的重要性

野生动物在成熟时会经历不同的挑战和机遇，而这种不同的经历会导致不同年龄的个体日常生活的不同程度的福利。与此同时，大多数刚出生的野生动物都无法存活到成年。年幼时死亡的个体所经历的不仅仅是其物种中年长成员一生的同质部分；相反，他们被截断的生活可能以非常不同的福利水平为特征。在这里，我提出福利预期的概念，作为在种群水平上量化野生动物福利的框架，给定与年龄相关的平均福利的个体水平数据。这个概念很适合与人口生态学中已经使用的分析方法一起使用，例如人口敏感性分析，并且适用于评估人为干预和自然压力对不同年龄个体的影响不成比例的福利后果。为了更好地了解和改善野生动物福利状况，应更加关注幼小动物及其面临的特殊挑战。