Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Megan Shipman, Behavioural Neuroscientist and Fellow at the Cascade Institute, Royal Roads University

With the internet and its widespread accessibility, many of us have front-row seats to widespread suffering and death across the globe for the first time in history, even when we are not directly affected.

We’re living in what scholars describe as a “polycrisis” — a set of interconnected crises that compound and intensify one another. Climate change intensifies displacement and conflict, economic precarity fuels political extremism and public health emergencies expose structural inequality.

As a result, the future can feel more uncertain than ever. If you feel overwhelmed by the constant influx of bad news and find it difficult to focus on day-to-day tasks, that response is understandable.

But research in psychology and cognitive science suggests there are ways to fight back against this and reclaim your attention.

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No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

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• Are you a Dink, Alice or Henry? How social mobility is different for today’s young people
  

• White Lotus hotels target gen Z travellers – but luxury resorts don’t reflect their travel habits

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The business model of outrage

Developing a critical awareness of how digital systems operate is an important first step. This sense of overwhelm is deliberately amplified by the way digital platforms and their profit-driven algorithms are designed.

Many of us go online to cope with stress or to escape, but the content that captures our attention most effectively often makes it worse.

Content that provokes anger, fear or moral outrage generates higher engagement. Negative headlines tend to attract more clicks than positive ones, creating incentives for media outlets to push content that increases engagement.

One study found that social media users are nearly twice as likely to share negative news articles that evoke strong negative emotions. Each interaction — a like, share or comment — signals to algorithms that similar content should be shown again. Increased engagement also reinforces users’ continued posting of negative material.

The result is a positive feedback loop in which emotionally charged content is amplified, often leading to the spread of misinformation and sowing of conflict.

Your brain in a 24/7 threat environment

Part of why we are so drawn to outrage lies in human neurobiology. Studies show that we choose to read more negative or cynically framed news stories even when positive stories are also available.

Much of this is just how humans have been wired: we evolved to pay attention to the most threatening stimuli. From a very early age, we show a biased attention toward spiders, snakes and threatening faces, which activate an acute stress response from the sympathetic nervous system and trigger a fight-or-flight response.

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Read more:
Rage bait: the psychology behind social media’s angriest posts

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However, we have only just recently started living in a world where negative stimuli are constantly at our fingertips. Digital media now intentionally uses these neural biases to hijack our attention for profit.

At the same time, we can only pay attention to so much at once. Our cognitive capacity is limited by what psychologists call our perceptual load.

If you’ve ever tried to work in an environment with many distractions — like in an office with construction next door — or attempted to juggle multiple tasks at once, you have experienced how quickly your attention can fragment. Multitasking typically results in poorer performance across tasks.

Doomscrolling and the stress spiral

This is where doomscrolling enters the picture. Doomscrolling refers to compulsive scrolling through negative news on digital platforms.

An unlimited stream of negative information that our brains must both react to (through sympathetic arousal) and sort through (perceptual load) can lead to information overload and chronic stress.

Stress and perceptual load interact to worsen our attention and diminish performance on certain attention-demanding tasks, suggesting that each utilize similar attentional resources.

You may find yourself in a vicious cycle: stress impairs your attention and task performance, leading to more stress, which then worsens your attention. You may then reach for your phone seeking distraction or relief, only to encounter more alarming content.

Research shows doomscrolling is more likely to cause psychological distress and worsen mental well-being, since the content that we are using to distract ourselves is often negative.

How to reclaim your attention

In the face of our current global polycrisis, the algorithmic manipulation of our emotions poses a serious challenge. If you want to interrupt this cycle, research suggests there are several practical steps you can take.

First, try to reduce time online. A particularly healthy time to be screen-free is before bed as screens can negatively impact sleep. Notably, poor sleep can lead to stress, and high stress can impair sleep.

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Read more:
How a mindful hobby could help you break your after-work ‘doomscrolling’ habit

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Second, replace screen time with new hobbies. Behavioural economics shows that reducing unwanted behaviour, such as drinking alcohol, may be easier when people engage with other activities they enjoy. Ride a bike, do a puzzle or take a cooking class.

Third, reduce stress through exercise, meditation or spending time with friends to break the negativity cycle. Form new, healthy habits that bring you joy.

But perhaps the most important step is simply becoming more aware of the behind-the-scenes forces vying for our attention that exploit our most visceral emotions. While we shouldn’t completely disengage from the news media, we need to better equip ourselves to defend against these threats to our attention and well-being.

Megan Shipman is affiliated with Cascade Institute

Zachary Pierce-Messick receives funding from The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and is a postdoctoral research fellow (T32DA007209)

– ref. Digital media is using negativity to steal our attention — here’s how to reclaim it – https://theconversation.com/digital-media-is-using-negativity-to-steal-our-attention-heres-how-to-reclaim-it-274101

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Geoffrey Wood, Professor, Co-Director, Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation, University of Guelph

They live in our houses, drink our water and even sleep in our beds. Cats have become an integral part of many households and share much of our lives.

They also share much of their biology with humans. Pet cats get cancer at a rate similar to humans and often develop the same types of cancer. Just like in humans, as health care and diets have improved, cats are living longer, which puts them at a higher lifetime risk of cancer.

But how similar are cat cancers to human cancers at the genetic level? Research colleagues and I have conducted the largest-ever cancer DNA sequencing study of cat tumours. Our research reveals striking similarities between feline and human cancers, and the results reveal benefits for cats as well as humans.

Newly published work from our international collaboration studied the tumours of 500 cats, including 13 different tumour types. We isolated DNA from these tumours, and mapped the sequence of 1,000 genes that are often found mutated in human cancers.

Cat and human cancers

Overall, the most commonly mutated gene was a cancer protective gene called TP53, which is also the most commonly mutated gene in human cancers. Another example is the gene PIK3CA, which is mutated in about 40 per cent of human breast cancers and was found to be altered in about 50 per cent of cat mammary cancers.

There are drugs that have been specifically developed to work on human cancers with certain mutations like those in PIK3CA. Now that we know what mutations are common in cat cancers, there is an opportunity to test these drugs for treating cats.

How do we study cancer in cats? Since 2009, the Ontario Veterinary College’s Veterinary Biobank, part of the Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation at the University of Guelph, has been banking samples of tumours from cats treated at the Animal Cancer Centre.

With owner consent, part of a cat’s tumour that is already being removed during surgery is saved and frozen for future studies. Also banked are blood samples, which serve as a resource for developing more non-invasive cancer tests using cancer-associated molecules found in blood.

Recently, the Veterinary Biobank has joined the Ontario Biobanks consortium of human biobanks to help facilitate more cross-species cancer studies. In addition, cancer clinical trials are being conducted in cat and dog patients to help translate research findings into better outcomes for pets with cancer, and to better inform us about human cancers as well.

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Read more:
Treating pets for cancer can revolutionize care for humans

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Cats can potentially teach us quite a lot about human cancer. There are several cancers or cancer subtypes that are common in cats but rare in humans. “Triple negative” breast cancer — which lacks estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and a growth factor receptor called HER2 — is by far the most common subtype in cats. However, it accounts for only 15 per cent of human breast cancers.

This subtype tends to occur in younger women, Black women and women with an inherited genetic predisposition (BRCA1 gene mutation) and is particularly aggressive and hard to treat.

Another example is pancreatic cancer. The acinar subtype that cats get most commonly is relatively rare in humans. Studying these rare human subtypes is potentially easier to do in cats as there are more cases.

Our cat sequencing study also found a few differences in mutation patterns between cat and human cancers. About 25 per cent of human cancers have mutations in RAS genes, whereas RAS mutations are rare in cat cancers. Studying these cancers in cats can help us to understand the biology of RAS genes in cancer.

Cat and mouse genomes

Cancer charities and agencies that provide grants to study human health routinely support studies that use rodent models of human cancer, but studying cancer in other species has been a harder sell.

Rodent models are either genetically engineered to develop cancer or are engineered to have a severely deficient immune system so that they can host human cancer cells.

These models are very powerful for examining the molecular mechanisms of cancer but have a poor track record for developing cancer drugs. More than 90 per cent of new cancer treatments developed using mouse models fail in human cancer trials and are never approved for clinical use.

In stark contrast, cat cancers frequently develop spontaneously in the same environment as humans. They also often have many of the same underlying or co-occurring medical conditions as humans, such as obesity, autoimmune diseases, kidney disease, diabetes and various other endocrine disorders.

Cat and human genomes are much more similar than mouse and human genomes, and the organization of cat genomes (the order of genes on the chromosomes) is much closer between cats and humans than between dogs and humans.

The (human) Cancer Genome Atlas is a massive open-access resource of mutations found in different types of cancer. Until now, no such resource existed for cats.

The data from our recent publication is available through the Wellcome Sanger Institute and will serve as a fundamental — and free — resource for researchers studying cancer in cats and humans for the benefit of both species.

Geoffrey Wood receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Pet Trust, and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

– ref. What pet cats can tell us about human cancer – https://theconversation.com/what-pet-cats-can-tell-us-about-human-cancer-276620

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Roxana Suehring, Assistant Professor in Environmental Analytical Chemistry, Toronto Metropolitan University

The Arctic has been in the news a lot lately. Between the increased geopolitical interest in Greenland, claims over sovereignty, resource exploitation and the devastating impacts of climate change, the region has become a sentinel for global change.

But away from these headlines, a quieter crisis is unfolding that threatens Canada’s role in global environmental science, law and policy: the dismantling of research teams at the department responsible for Canada’s environmental policies and programs. The federal government’s plan to reduce the public service by 15 per cent over three years means that more than 800 positions at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) will be cut.

As an environmental scientist who has been involved in the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) since 2016 and an interdisciplinary legal scholar focused on water governance in Canada, we have seen how science can shape policy. For decades, ECCC research scientists have been integral to the work of AMAP, a working group that provides advice and assessments to the Arctic Council.

This intergovernmental group comprised of Indigenous Peoples, Arctic states and non-Arctic states with observer status is the major platform for protecting the environment and co-ordinating sustainable development initiatives in the Arctic.

Scientists at ECCC have played a leading role in more than 20 international reports on persistent organic pollutants and mercury. In fact, ECCC researchers have acted as the largest group of chapter leads in these global assessments since the 1990s.

Budget cuts at ECCC raise concerns about how governments will develop effective polices and laws that rely upon scientific research.

The risks from budget cuts

Many of the scientists who lead projects on the long-term trends of toxins in Arctic wildlife face cuts or might lose their jobs entirely. Scientists at ECCC are often the ones to identify and assess “chemicals of emerging Arctic concern” — newly discovered chemical threats to human and environmental health that scientists are only just beginning to understand.

Losing the scientists who lead and interpret contaminant data in Arctic wildlife will take much more from Canada than scientific expertise; we risk losing our ability to understand and effectively react to chemical threats and their potential environmental and health impacts.

Data collection for unique monitoring datasets spanning up to 50 years is at risk of being discontinued. Even more concerning is the potential loss of national tissue archives if monitoring and research projects are cut. Contaminant data in Canadian wildlife have been instrumental to the listing of toxins under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, an international treaty to control the global production and use of particularly hazardous chemicals.

Similarly, monitoring for mercury in Arctic air and biota is an important part of the rationale for the Minamata Convention, a global treaty designed to protect human and environmental health from mercury contamination.

In many ways, these global agreements exist because Canadian data, produced by ECCC scientists, proved that chemicals used thousands of miles away end up in the bodies of Arctic wildlife and Indigenous Peoples who rely on healthy wildlife for food security, cultural identity and practices.

These international treaties set out the norms, legal principles and regulatory schemes that have been incorporated into Canadian law. They support the risk assessment and management of many toxic chemicals under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Losing these samples and monitoring programs would set back Canadian and global contaminant research and reinforce criticisms that Canada is a laggard in environmental law and policy.

Risk for Indigenous communities

Budget cuts could also intimately impact the daily lives of those living in the Arctic and raise questions of environmental justice. Indigenous communities in the Arctic face higher exposure to many toxins than other Canadians due to their reliance on foods like fish, belugas and seals.

Despite global efforts, blood mercury levels in many Inuit communities remain higher than the general Canadian population. Furthermore, concentrations of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, also known as “forever chemicals,” are consistently higher in these communities than in the south.

Without ongoing research, we risk creating a vacuum in environmental governance and law. Current legislation, like the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, aims to protect vulnerable populations and uphold the right to a healthy environment and environmental justice. But we cannot uphold these rights if we stop measuring how contaminants are impacting the health of the environment, food and water of the populations most affected by these chemicals.

Across Canada, the cuts undermine effective chemical management. Canada’s chemical management plan depends heavily on the expert assessment of government scientists. This expert-based risk assessment has enabled the discovery and monitoring of new chemical risks with comparatively few bureaucratic hurdles. However, it also means that the proposed cuts are particularly devastating to this program.

If we remove the scientists the regulatory system depends on, the system breaks. This means that these proposed cuts could not only cost jobs and reduce scientific excellence in Canada, but also leave the health of Canadians and our environment less protected.

Roxana Suehring receives funding from NSERC, Tri-Council, Mitacs, NCP, MECP, and ECCC.

Patricia Hania receives funding from SSHRC and NSERC.

– ref. Budget cuts at Environment and Climate Change Canada threaten Arctic science – https://theconversation.com/budget-cuts-at-environment-and-climate-change-canada-threaten-arctic-science-276606

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Brodie Ramin, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

You are driving fast, maybe too fast, on a highway at night. Maybe it’s snowing, or raining, or your eyes are glazing over as you feel the fatigue of a long day set in, or maybe your phone dings and you look down for an instant. Suddenly the car in from of you stops and you hit the brakes. You feel your tires skid and for a second, you are sure you have crashed.

But then: Nothing.

You stopped just in time. Heart pounding, you exhale. You are shaken but also impressed by your speedy reflexes. You think to yourself: No harm done.

But harm nearly done. And that’s the problem.

Near-misses like this often disappear from our minds as fast as they happen. But they are the most valuable safety information we have. People, organizations and societies often fail to prevent disasters, not for lack of warnings, but because they don’t take near misses seriously.

Safety scientist James Reason saw near misses as “immunizations” for a safety system, chances to detect and fix underlying vulnerabilities before real harm occurs. But too often, we waste these chances. We get lucky, and instead of investigating or analyzing what went wrong, we move on.

My interest in near-misses comes from practising medicine and from my research into the history of disasters and system failures, work that informed my book Written in Blood. Studying accidents across fields, from fires to transportation to health care, shows that warning signs are often visible long before catastrophe strikes.

Luck is not a strategy

Take something as mundane as your phone. In late 2025, Apple released iOS 26.1, a routine software update. Except it wasn’t routine. It patched multiple critical vulnerabilities that could have allowed attackers to seize control of iPhones. Had hackers succeeded, millions of users’ data and privacy could have been compromised. And while some phones probably had been hacked, for most people, the crisis was avoided.

In health care, near-misses are common: A medication nearly given to the wrong patient but caught in time, or a surgical tool counted incorrectly but found before the patient’s incision is closed. These are serious signals, but too often they go unreported. The majority of health-care workers fail to report near misses due to fear of blame, lack of feedback or the false belief that no harm means no problem.

Often, staff in health care don’t even realize a near-miss has occurred. If we’re not looking for near-misses, we are nearly guaranteed not to learn from them.

Transportation shows the same pattern. Near-collisions on icy highways. Trains braking just before overshooting a signal. Aircraft diverting after onboard systems detect a mechanical fault mid-flight. In aviation and rail, these close calls are treated as data. In many other sectors, they are dismissed as background noise. But the data is there.

A recent Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) study found that at just 20 monitored intersections, more than 610,000 “near-miss” incidents — close calls between vehicles and pedestrians or cyclists — were recorded from September 2024 to February 2025.

Our systems are sending signals. Every time we get lucky is a chance to learn — a chance to build better layers of defence; a chance to prevent the next tragedy. Near-misses aren’t false alarms. They’re the most honest feedback a system gives: The future, whispering in the present.

Our brains aren’t wired for prevention

So why don’t we learn from close calls?

Psychologists have long understood the human brain is terrible at processing invisible risks. We overreact to dramatic events but underreact to near-misses. We confuse luck with safety. And we discount what “almost” happened.

Three psychological traps are especially pernicious:

1. Availability bias: We remember big disasters, but not the hundreds of times catastrophe was narrowly averted. This skews our risk radar.
2. Confirmation bias: We assume a system is safe because it didn’t fail. But many systems survive not because they’re strong, but because nothing has lined up to break them — yet.
3. Optimism bias: We know bad things happen to other people but assume our skill or luck will protect us.

Reason’s “Swiss cheese” model describes how disasters happen when weaknesses in multiple layers of defence align. A near miss is when they almost line up and something, often by chance, blocks the path. But unless we plug those holes, the next time, we might not be so lucky.

There are exceptions. Aviation, nuclear energy and air traffic control, so-called “high-reliability organizations,” understand this. Ideally, they treat every close call as a data point. They institutionalize reporting. They never forget to be afraid.

These organizations cultivate a chronic unease, a kind of productive paranoia. It’s not pessimism; it’s realism. They know that systems often drift toward failure unless they’re constantly corrected. That mindset is why they’re among the safest sectors in the world.

Imagine if we brought that mindset to more sectors — if every phishing text that almost fooled someone became a reason to upgrade security, if every minor medical error was reviewed like a crash. The price of ignoring near-misses is always paid eventually — in insurance claims, infrastructure failures, lawsuits and preventable grief.

What you can do now

If near-misses are warning flares, the simplest step is to stop ignoring them. When something almost goes wrong, the instinct is often to shrug it off as luck. But luck is data. It is evidence that a system came close to failing.

The real lesson of near-misses is that they allow us to learn without paying the full price of disaster. Aviation, nuclear power and other high-risk industries have built entire safety systems around studying these moments.

We should treat them the same way in everyday life: on the road, at home and at work. Notice them. Talk about them. Fix the conditions that made them possible.

Because the goal is not simply to avoid disaster. The goal is to learn from the moments when things almost go wrong.

Brodie Ramin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why we ignore the warnings that could save us – https://theconversation.com/why-we-ignore-the-warnings-that-could-save-us-277356

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jeanette Ashe, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Women’s Leadership, King’s College London

The past year marked the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the world’s most comprehensive plan to achieve the equal rights of women and girls.

Adopted in 1995, it called on governments to fight for gender equality, to protect women’s rights and to rebalance power structures so that everyone has an equitable chance in the world.

Thirty years later, Canada is still falling short. One of Beijing’s core commitments was for governments to create permanent, well-resourced institutions dedicated to advancing gender equality. Yet across Canada, some provinces still lack full, stand-alone ministries of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE), and the federal ministry of WAGE has been deprioritized.

A fragile federal commitment

Prime Minister Mark Carney initially dropped the Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) portfolio from his first cabinet, reinstating it only after pushback from women’s and social justice organizations.

More recently, reports of deep budget cuts to WAGE have renewed concern that gender equality remains politically expendable. Without sustained funding, programs vital to women’s safety and economic security could be decimated at a time when a number of urgent issues demand gender expertise.

As a recent UN Women media advisory reports, “the spread of digital misogyny poses a direct and urgent threat to progress on gender equality.” While much of this activity results in various forms of cyberbullying and harassment, the impact of these networks goes far beyond the digital world and shows up in real life spaces like our public schools.

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Read more:
‘Quiet, piggy’ and other slurs: Powerful men fuel online abuse against women in politics and media

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Wavering commitment

Yet, Canadian governments have done little to respond, as exemplified by AI Minister Evan Solomon’s decision against banning Elon Musk’s X or his AI chatbot Grok despite the growing problems of “nudification” and personalized pornography .

This wavering commitment echoes global patterns of institutional gender rollback, with the UN warning of a “post-feminist retrenchment.”

These trends are part of an international shift against equity and inclusion exemplified by recent court cases and policy changes in the United States — a shift glaringly evident as the Donald Trump administration blames gangs of “wine moms” for ICE protests and violence, including the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis. Good’s death was described by Vice President JD Vance as a “tragedy of her own making.”

While this anti-equity rhetoric is circulating in Canada, a recent report reveals that “most Canadians view EDI measures in the workplace positively, with strong support among equity deserving groups, younger workers and those with positive job experiences.”

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Read more:
Blaming ‘wine moms’ for ICE protest violence is another baseless, misogynist myth

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A provincial patchwork

Six provinces currently maintain full, stand-alone ministries dedicated to women and gender equality:

• Manitoba — Minister Responsible for Gender Equity (also responsible for Accessibility and Families)
• Saskatchewan — Minister responsible for the Status of Women (also Parks, Culture and Sport, and other portfolios)
• Québec — Minister responsible for Women’s Equality (also Health and Seniors)
• New Brunswick — Minister responsible for Women’s Equality (also Seniors)
• Prince Edward Island — Minister responsible for the Status of Women (also Workforce, Advanced Learning and Population)
• Newfoundland and Labrador – Minister responsible for Gender Equality (sole portfolio)
• All three territories, Nunavut, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, also maintain full ministers responsible for women’s equality.

By contrast, four provinces still lack a dedicated ministry:

• British Columbia — No ministry; a parliamentary secretary for Gender Equity is housed within the Ministry of Finance
• Alberta — A minister for Arts, Culture and Status of Women shares the file among several unrelated responsibilities
• Ontario — An associate minister for Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity reports to a senior minister, without a full department
• Nova Scotia — The Attorney General and Minister of Justice holds the equality and anti-racism file alongside multiple other portfolios

Opaque and easily cut

When gender equality has a ministry of its own, citizens can see its budget, monitor its priorities and hold governments accountable. Where it does not, gender programs are buried inside larger departments; invisible in financial statements and easily cut.

Even federally, where WAGE exists, proposed cuts and decreased funding show how vulnerable these portfolios remain.

Carney’s mandate letter to cabinet clearly indicated a shift from his predecessor’s feminist brand. There is no reference at all to feminism or gender equality. In fact, Carney’s cuts to WAGE seem to reflect a larger rejection of feminist policies, including foreign policy.

But while governments stall, the public is ahead. Recent Abacus Data polling found that 86 per cent of Canadians support equal numbers of women and men in politics and 58 per cent support requiring political parties to nominate a minimum number of women candidates — up four points from last year.

This data shows Canadians are ready for legislated gender quotas and for the institutions needed to help deliver them. Fully funded ministries for Women and Gender Equality are one such institution.

Why now matters

The Beijing anniversary arrived amid a global gender backlash, from the rollback of reproductive rights in the U.S. to rising online abuse of women in politics. At precisely this moment, governments should be strengthening equality initiatives rather than weakening them.

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Read more:
Growing threats faced by women candidates undermine our democracy

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If gender equality is a priority, it’s simply not enough to celebrate the growing number of women in our legislatures. Real progress demands institutional power and stable funding of gender equality mandates. As UN Women recently reported, “achieving gender parity could cumulatively add US$342 trillion to the global economy by 2050.”

Repositioning Canada in the global hierarchy does not mean leaving 50 per cent of the population behind. Now, more than ever before, it’s critical to double down on the commitment to equity. In troubled times, leaders need to embrace equity wholesale, and taking leadership on equity must be a cornerstone of Carney’s supposed “values-based” pragmatism.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. International Women’s Day: Why is Mark Carney rejecting gender equity efforts? – https://theconversation.com/international-womens-day-why-is-mark-carney-rejecting-gender-equity-efforts-273677

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Troy Potter, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne

International Women’s Day is an important day for everyone, regardless of gender, to raise awareness about gender inequality. This includes naming harms, celebrating gains and recommitting to societal and institutional change.

But we should be doing this every day. Schools play a fundamental role in challenging gender inequality because they’re one of the few places where adults have regular, ongoing contact and relationships with young people. Classroom and schoolyard interactions provide an opportunity for teachers and students to develop these relationships in respectful ways.

While all teachers can contribute to this work, male teachers can play a significant role in disrupting patriarchal and misogynistic behaviours.

In a national study, Michael Kehler, one of the authors of this story, is currently hearing from male teachers from across Canada who promote gender and social justice while disrupting patriarchal masculinities in their classrooms. These teachers are reporting that, in varying degrees, they are challenging misogyny and homophobia, and disrupting damaging forms of masculinity in their classrooms and schools.

In partnership with a parallel project with Australian male teachers (led by the first author of this story, Troy Potter), our research offers emerging insights into how all teachers can challenge and respond to misogyny, sexism and homophobia in schools.

Enacting masculinity in schools

Boys often learn how to be particular kinds of boys by negotiating complex power dynamics. Bullying and harassment are used against other boys, as well as girls, to assert dominance and police traditional gender norms. Homophobic language and sexting are two examples of this.

Recent research shows that boys’ use of misogynistic language, hostility and harassment is on the rise, and is often fuelled by online “manosphere” content. Increasingly, schools are less safe for women teachers — a growing concern, especially when school leadership denies or minimizes women teachers’ experiences of sexual harassment.

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Read more:
‘Adolescence’ pulls in audiences with its dramatic critique of teenage masculinity

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Off-hand remarks like “that’s just boys” serve to excuse boys’ violence and aggression. At the same time, such responses also maintain the cultural conditions that continue to reproduce violence while ignoring the choices boys make to accept norms of masculinity.

Rather than turning a blind eye to boys’ problematic behaviour, drawing attention to it can encourage everyone to reflect on whether such behaviour is appropriate or beneficial.

Research in Australia has shown that boys are moving away from restrictive views of masculinity, believe in gender equality and are rejecting sexist behaviour. This change in boys’ attitudes can be further supported by addressing misogyny and sexism in schools at both the policy and classroom level.

Why male teachers matter

While gender justice work is often seen as women’s work, there’s a growing emphasis on the need to engage men to redress gender inequities.

The use of male role models, though, can often promote gender norms rather than changing them. Additionally, some calls for more male teachers have been based on a perceived need to re-masculinize schools and the assumption that male teachers are better disciplinarians.

And although women make up the majority of the teaching workforce in Canada, men are over-represented in school leadership positions. This is also the case for the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. Male leaders can play a significant role in shaping equitable school cultures.

Within classrooms, it can also be dangerous for women teachers to call out misogyny. In some cases, women teachers may be labelled as “crazy” or “overreacting,” while in others, male students may use teachers’ objection as catalysts to increase harassment. Their relationships with male students may enable them to have more influence over what is seen to as appropriate masculine behaviours.

This isn’t to suggest male teachers operate from a neutral position. Male teachers live multifaceted identities, shaped by factors including gender, race, culture, ability and class. Male teachers navigate their own narratives and abilities to disrupt traditional masculinity.

But when men promote gender equality and challenge harmful forms of masculinity, they show boys that this is what men can, and should, do. They show boys that fighting for gender equality is not only women’s responsibility.

Micro‑moments matter

In Canadian schools, and those in many other countries, respectful relationships programs, such as Respectful Futures, are delivered to support students’ understanding of respectful, equal and non-violent relationships.

To be effective, however, respectful relationships programs — like all gender justice work — must move beyond isolated programs and be embedded into whole-school approaches.

In the ongoing Canadian study, (Re)defining Masculinities,, 20 teachers across four provinces have provided their insights and reflections. And while we are still inviting teacher participation across Canada, our preliminary findings indicate teachers are:

• Calling out sexist jokes and asking students to explain why they’re funny

• Challenging offhand remarks, such as “You’re such a girl!”

• Unpacking power dynamics wherever they appear, whether in boys’ behaviour or in texts students view or read

• Providing boys with a language to express emotions and vulnerability.

Misogyny stems not only from explicit acts, but also from inaction. When male teachers choose not to interrupt derogatory talk, sexist jokes or sexual harassment, those attitudes and behaviours become normal.

By contrast, when male teachers speak up, they help change what other boys think is OK and provide opportunities for boys to learn alternative ways of being young men.

Our research will learn more about the various ways male teachers are already disrupting harmful masculinities to reduce misogyny. This will allow us to better support other male teachers to become change agents for gender equality.

Gender justice benefits everyone

The 2026 International Women’s Day theme #BalanceTheScales emphasizes that all women and girls deserve to be safe, respected and free to shape their own lives, just like men and boys.

Creating gender equality is about expanding boys’ awareness and consideration of others, to support them to express care and empathy and to reject dominant and violent behaviour. It is about seeing girls and women, and other boys and men, as worthy of respect, rather than as threats.

Disrupting and interrupting misogyny not only benefits girls and women, but boys and men, too. When gender equality advances, we create more fair and just families, schools, communities and societies. How can that not benefit everyone?

Troy Potter receives funding from the Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne, for his research project, Challenging masculinities: Male-identifying teachers’ gender-just pedagogical practices in Australia.

Michael Kehler receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council for a national study-Redefining Masculinities: Male Identifying Teachers Engaging Boys as Change Agents.

– ref. Male teachers can challenge misogyny in schools every day, not just on International Women’s Day – https://theconversation.com/male-teachers-can-challenge-misogyny-in-schools-every-day-not-just-on-international-womens-day-277358

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kawser Ahmed, Adjunct Professor, Natural Resource Institute (NRI), University of Manitoba

Even as American and Iranian officials were participating in Omani-mediated talks aimed at preventing further escalation between the two nations, the United States, alongside Israel, launched military strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

The mediation had raised cautious hopes of de-escalating long-running hostility between Iran and the U.S. Instead, this use of force reflects a familiar post-1945 pattern of major powers acting unilaterally rather than through multilateral institutions like the United Nations.

Since the end of the Second World War, international conflicts have been addressed one of two ways: collectively — through the UN Security Council — or unilaterally, often via so-called “coalitions of the willing.”

During the Cold War and beyond, global superpowers like the U.S. and Russia have often pursued methods that serve their national interests for regime change or geopolitical balances of power.

It’s against this backdrop that supposed U.S. “just war” objectives in Iran should be scrutinized. According to an official announcement, the U.S. has five primary aims. But how well do these stated objectives align with international law?

From the League of Nations to the UN charter

When rules are broken, there are consequences, whether at a personal, national or global level. Rules are made to bring order to chaos, and humans societies have long sought to craft and formalize them.

After the devastation of the First World War, the League of Nations was founded in 1920. Its preamble pledged:

“By the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations.”

Without meaningful enforcement power, however, the organization failed to prevent aggression in the 1930s and ultimately set the stage for the outbreak of the Second World War.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 in the aftermath of that war. Its founding document, the Charter of the United Nations, placed particular emphasis on the territorial integrity and political independence of states.

These widely agreed principles are meant to prevent war, especially wars of choice. But the unequal nature of the Security Council, persistence of proxy wars and violent conflict shows how enforcement of international law remains uneven, especially when powerful states act outside collective mechanisms.

Scrutinizing U.S. objectives

When examined critically, significant inconsistencies emerge between Washington’s objectives for Iran and the actual legal realities undermining the rules-based international order laid out in the UN charter.

The first stated aim, according to the official joint statement by the U.S. and Israel, is to “stand united in defense of our citizens, sovereignty and territory.” This frames the attacks as protective and reactive. Yet at the outset of the war, there was no verified report of Iran posing an imminent threat to U.S. territory or allies. Instead, the objective closely aligns with Israel’s priorities in the region.

Second, the war has been framed as necessary to counter Iranian escalation. The joint statement describes Iranian missile and drone launches as “indiscriminate and reckless.” But those strikes only came after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s top leadership and caused enormous civilian casualties. Framing Iran’s actions purely as escalation omits the fact that Iran’s regional strikes were responsive, not pre-emptive.

The third justification is to maintain “regional stability” and security. This claim sits uneasily alongside widening instability, including friendly fire incidents, cross-border missile exchanges and mounting casualties in Lebanon, Bahrain, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

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Does international law still matter? The strike on the girls’ school in Iran shows why we need it

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Fourth, the invasion has been defended as necessary to uphold sovereignty norms. The joint statement accuses Iran’s attacks of violating the sovereignty of regional states. Yet prior to the joint offensive, there was no evidence of such a breach.

In contrast, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes penetrated deep into Iranian territory, breaching Iran’s sovereignty under Article 2(4) of the UN charter. Sovereignty appears to be invoked selectively.

Lastly, the war has been framed as an exercise of collective self-defence. However, Article 51 of the UN charter permits self-defence only if an armed attack occurs. As reported, the initial attack was conducted by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

This raises a deeper legitimacy question: are some states claiming a right to pre-emptive or preventive war under the guise of self-defence while denying that right to others?

Regime change and historical lessons

None of this denies Iran’s long record of supporting regional proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. However, the U.S. nevertheless moved, de facto, into a war that looks a lot like regime change by other means — particularly in light of targeted strikes against senior Iranian leadership.

The apparent calculation was that ordinary Iranians would quickly rise up, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would surrender and a U.S.-friendly government would emerge. That optimism was reverberated in U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media rhetoric, if not part of comprehensive U.S. strategy.

If history teaches anything, it’s this: bombing can change a ruler, but not the lives of the ruled. Another regime arrives, flags and ideologies shift and everyday people still carry the burden — just ask the people of Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya.

The growing trend of unilateral interventions severely erodes the aspiration of collective security founded in the UN system. It also sets a dangerous precedence that larger powers can usurp smaller ones should they chose to do so.

Russia had already invaded Ukraine in 2021 and though under-reported, Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen and Bahrain; Turkey in Syria, Iraq and Libya; and the UAE in Libya, Yemen.

The economic consequences of the current war are also great. Oil prices have increased and natural gas prices have spiked almost 70 per cent in Europe. Some countries, like Myanmar, are already preparing to ration oil and gas supplies.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in Gulf nations are stranded and unable to return to their home countries, and people are being displaced from Lebanon again — on top of the millions already suffering in Gaza.

Rich countries may be able to cope with such shocks, but poor ones in the Global South won’t. Unless this chaos stops, households won’t be able to keep the lights on or their engines running.

For the rule of law to prevail, states — especially powerful ones — must respect international norms consistently, rather than invoking them selectively. Without that restraint, the international system risks descending into a jungle where only the strongest survive.

Kawser Ahmed is affiliated with Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada (CRRIC)

– ref. The U.S.-Israel war with Iran could shatter the United Nations-led global order – https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-israel-war-with-iran-could-shatter-the-united-nations-led-global-order-277441

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jeremy Wildeman, Adjunct assistant professor, Carleton University; L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently warned at the World at the Economic Forum in Davos that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” many saw this as a defence of international law and the multilateral order. That earned him global accolades.

At the time, Canada and Denmark were under pressure from the Donald Trump administration to surrender territory to the United States: Greenland from Denmark, and either the entirety or parts of Canada.

Trump’s demands came as a shock to a western leaders who maintain a deeply optimistic interpretation of American intentions and the immutability of their relationships. It also caused significant alarm among U.S. allies in the West, who have spent decades under the American security umbrella.

It’s likely because western countries were in disarray and unable to push back forcefully against Trump’s bullying that Carney’s speech was so well-received.

He appeared to put words into immediate action, rebuilding Canada’s fraught relationships with key Global South powers such as China and India while providing leadership on a major trade alliance among Canada, the European Union (EU) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership states to mitigate the impact of Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs.

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Mark Carney’s visit to India hits the reset button on the Canada–India relationship

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Many observers thought Canada was turning to a principled foreign policy, championing universal liberal values such as democracy, justice, human rights and the rule of law. It seemed as though Canada was coming to the defence of a rules-based order, and this was helping it regain significant international prestige.

So it came as a shock when Carney offered immediate support to an illegal U.S.-Israel war of aggression against Iran on Feb. 28.

The liberal and rules-based orders

Within days Carney was equivocating about the war and his initial statement of support. He seemed to be attempting to balance his stated support for international law with being an American ally. He has said that he supports the U.S. and Israeli war “with regret” and that Canada will stand by its allies “when it makes sense.”

What seems like hypocrisy by Carney is in fact consistent with contemporary Canadian foreign policy and its interpretation of international law.

This can be understood by exploring Canada’s participation in two international systems established by the U.S. after the Second World War: the liberal international order and the rules-based order.

The liberal international order expresses some of the highest principles of liberal internationalism: anti-racism, democracy and the right to self-governance, free trade and economic interdependence, multilateral co-operation and respect for international law.

While the rules-based order draws on the liberal international order’s rules and norms, it selectively interprets them for U.S. and western interests. Whereas international law is a set of rules that govern relations between states and are enforced by institutions such as the International Court of Justice, the rules-based order is a deliberately opaque concept. Its rules are vague and ill-defined, and it is unclear who has the right to define or generate them.

Crucially, the post-war international order was meant to prohibit or restrict war, as laid out in the United Nations Charter. Article 2, paragraph 4, of the charter has been a cornerstone of international law and the liberal international order, which the U.S. helped establish after the Second World War. It explicitly prohibits states from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state.

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Read more:
The U.S.-Israel war with Iran could shatter the United Nations-led global order

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Selective enforcement of international law

The U.S. appears to invoke these rules primarily when confronting geopolitical rivals such as Russia or China, or when imposing its will on the rest of the world.

The U.S. and other western powers began shifting their rhetorical support from the liberal toward the rules-based order in the 2000s in response to the rise of Global South powers like China. In many ways, the rules-based order is an inequitable, colour-coded system that reinforces western power, and Canada has been a strong supporter of it.

Carney acknowledged this in Davos by saying the rules-based order was never fair because the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, trade rules were enforced asymmetrically and international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This is on vivid display when comparing Canada’s strong response against Russia’s illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine compared to its support for the U.S.-Israel illegal 2026 war against Iran, its reluctance in early January to condemn the U.S. government’s illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and its de facto support for Israel’s illegal occupation and war crimes in Palestine.

Trump and the unraveling of the western order

What changed in 2025 is the Trump government’s hostility to the rules-based order, which it considers a costly obstacle to consolidating power around the world.

Its strategic approach has included an explicit disavowal of liberal internationalism’s values, including multilateralism and international law. It has threatened to seize western allied territory and resources while imposing tariffs on them and pressuring them to substantially increase U.S. arms purchases.

Carney noted that western states had been fine with the inequities of the rules-based order so long as they benefited from it at the expense of the rest of the world. Their problem was when the U.S. started to treat them like it treats the Global South, through a neo-imperialism built on principles that “might makes right” and the strong should dominate the weak.

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Read more:
U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran may succeed on a military basis, but at what cost?

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Another important factor that may have encouraged some in western capitals to accept the U.S. war against Iran was Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent Munich Security Conference speech. He lauded Europe’s colonial past and encouraged them to join the U.S. in a renewed global domination, plundering the rest of the world like they did in the past.

Canada’s decision to back the war with Iran was likely also based on the Carney government’s courting of Jewish and Iranian diasporic constituencies and a longstanding institutional reliance on U.S. leadership. But Rubio’s speech created conditions favourable for Carney to support the war under the logic of the rules-based order.

At the same time, Canada will have weakened its moral standing if the U.S. turns to territorial expansion in the Americas. The war is also deeply unpopular among Liberal voters, and support for it undermined the prestige Carney gained from Davos, causing him to begin equivocating on his initial position.

Jeremy Wildeman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Respecting international law depends on who breaks it: Why Canada backed the war against Iran – https://theconversation.com/respecting-international-law-depends-on-who-breaks-it-why-canada-backed-the-war-against-iran-277684

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Étienne Sinotte, PhD Student in Political Science, McGill University

Peru’s interim president José Jerí was censured and removed by the country’s congress in February after just four months on the job. He was ousted for ethical failures following several scandals and replaced by current interim president José María Balcázar.

Jerí was the latest in a list of Peruvian presidents to be removed from office before completing their terms. His ouster occurred less than two months before the upcoming general elections, scheduled for April 12.

The elections are notable for the record number of competing parties and candidates for the presidency. No fewer than 36 candidates are competing for the country’s highest office, with none polling higher than 10 per cent.

These two elements — Jerí’s removal and the record number of presidential hopefuls — are not coincidental. Rather, they are symptoms of a profound institutional crisis.

Over the past decade, instability has come to define Peru’s political landscape, as successive congresses and presidents have become locked in a struggle for power.

How can this persistent tug-of-war be explained? And is there hope for a reversal?

A complex crisis

Jerí was the third president not to finish their mandate since Peru’s last elections in 2021. His predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was ousted by congress in October 2025 amid corruption allegations and criticism over her handling of rising insecurity. Before her, Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021, was removed from office and jailed after attempting a self-coup.

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This pattern of rapid presidential turnover is not unprecedented: during the 2011–16 period, four presidents also held office in quick succession. The long-running instability is primarily caused by three core mechanisms: social fragmentation, political fragmentation and the normalization of extraordinary measures.

Peruvian society has lost many of the shared narratives — the stories through which we understand society — that once helped organize political conflict and representation. Class-based identities and the left-right divide, which previously structured social relations and electoral choices, have steadily eroded.

In their place, a fragmented landscape of competing identities has emerged — regional, gendered, ethnic and occupational. None of these is strong enough to form a basis for national politics on its own.

This social fragmentation is mirrored by political fragmentation. Peru’s party system has all but disappeared, making way for personalistic parties, high turnover among politicians and weak ties between representatives and voters.

The way politics works has been changed because of more opportunistic behaviour by members of congress who know they’ll have short careers due to their weak relationships with constituents.

In the last decade, congress has increasingly relied on tools such as censure. As a result, political conflict is no longer resolved through negotiation or electoral cycles, but through institutional breakdown.

A democracy under stress

These elements result in a particular form of democratic backsliding, a concept which means the weakening of the institutions which make democracy work. We tend to think of struggling democracies as countries where leaders become increasingly autocratic and seek to increase their power.

U.S. President Donald Trump is a good example of this. Since the beginning of his second term, he has weaponized various government institutions to attack political opponents, launch immigration crackdowns and impose tariffs. However, backsliding in current-day Peru works differently.

Due to political fragmentation and the normalization of extreme measures like censure, Peru is not suffering from the concentration of power in the hands of one person. Rather, the country is experiencing the dilution of power into the hands of politicians attached to parties which have mostly ceased to represent the interests of the people and who are acting in their short-term interests alone.

Democracy is eroding not because of a tyrant, but because its support beams are being hollowed out from within.

It is highly unlikely that we will see much change to this situation in the near future. Many elements commonly needed to reverse democratic backsliding are not present in Peru today.

For instance, we are unlikely to see the election of a strong and unified pro-democracy coalition backed by a resourceful civil society. The upcoming elections are shaping up to be the most divided in history, with a record number of candidates for the presidency and a highly divided electorate.

In addition, the Peruvian state is facing crisis of legitimacy: most citizens distrust the government, believing it prioritizes political and economic elites rather than the public interest.

Another election and another president are not likely to solve Peru’s central issue: the erosion of the institutions that once connected citizens, parties and the state. Without rebuilding mechanisms of representation and accountability, elections alone are more likely to reproduce instability rather than resolve it.

Étienne Sinotte receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. The ousting of Peru’s president points to a deeper crisis – https://theconversation.com/the-ousting-of-perus-president-points-to-a-deeper-crisis-276847

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sarah E. Turner, Associate Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University

Little Punch, a seven-month-old Japanese macaque living in the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan, has captured hearts on the internet. Abandoned by his mother in the first few days of his life and raised by the keepers at the zoo, he has had some trouble integrating into the group of around 60 Japanese macaques.

The keepers gave him a stuffed orangutan, which he carries with him — grooming its plushy fur the way monkeys usually care for one another. Some monkeys in the group were pushing Punch away, dragging him and reacting negatively to him. The internet is demanding to know why. And why would his mother abandon him?

As primate researchers who have spent thousands of hours scientifically observing Japanese monkeys like Punch, we wanted to provide a bit of Japanese monkey-world context.

Wild monkey mothers don’t abandon infants

Japanese macaques or snow monkeys — Macaca fuscata to scientists — are a highly social and intelligent species.

In the wild, these monkeys do not abandon their infants.

We won’t say it has never happened, but it would be an extreme behaviour if it occurred. We have also not seen it in more than 25 years of studying Japanese monkeys at the Awajishima Monkey Center on Awaji Island, Japan, where the monkeys live in free-ranging groups.

Quite the contrary, we have observed mothers caring for their infants and providing extra care for infants with physical disabilities that prevent them from clinging to their mother, and for injured or ill infants.

We have witnessed macaque mothers at Awajishima hold their disabled infants up to nurse and walk on three limbs, using an arm to support the baby, sometimes carrying them for years longer than a mother usually would.

If an infant dies in the wild, a mother will often carry the body for days, presumably a reflection of her deep attachment.

This also makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because, in rare cases, an unresponsive infant may regain consciousness.

To be a Japanese mother monkey is to be a dedicated mother.

Dedicated, sometimes bewildered, mothers

This is not to say that every wild Japanese monkey mother is immediately good at it. We have seen bewildered monkey mothers holding their infants upside down or becoming distracted while their infants wander into trouble.

We have seen them looking at the new squirming creature they have birthed with expressions of mystified dismay that would be recognizable to any human mother at one time or another.

But in a wild group, those first-time mothers have relatives to help them and to learn from. They usually stay in the same group for their whole lives, and they have a dominance rank order that they pass down to their offspring.

Male Japanese monkeys are usually not directly involved with infants. As the infants get older, though, and gain more independence, the males help out too by socializing with them.

Abandonment in captivity

Punch’s mother either lacked the skills to look after her infant, was stressed by captivity and its associated conditions, or both. We don’t know her full story; she may have been raised by humans herself or experienced other difficulties.

Infant abandonment does happen sometimes in captivity — 7.7 per cent of cases according to one study — primarily in first-time or low-ranking mothers. Human caretakers do their best to raise infants, but it causes challenges.

Adoption can happen in captivity too. But the environment is different in a zoo: groups are not necessarily composed of female relatives the way a wild group would be; the males can’t leave as they would in the wild. Also some zoo monkeys are raised by humans or come from the entertainment industry.

These monkeys may “speak” a different social language. Punch wasn’t able to learn how to “speak Japanese macaque” from his human caregivers.

A behaviourally flexible species

The good news for Punch (and his devoted human followers) is that Japanese macaques are behaviourally flexible and can learn from the monkeys around them, and he is already learning to communicate with other monkeys and to find a place in his group.

In the wild, infant Japanese monkeys will nurse for up to two years. When they are orphaned, they can survive at Punch’s age — especially if they are adopted, or even just befriended, by others.

When Punch was approaching another monkey to play, he may have been inadvertently sending signals such as, “I’m afraid of you,” or “I’m dominant over you.”

The more time Punch spends in his group, the more he will learn how the other monkeys interact. He will learn what behaviours are okay, socially. For Punch, this is the best outcome. Monkeys should not be kept as pets — they are wild animals and need to be part of the rich and stimulating social world of other monkeys.

Punch is part of an intelligent, social and behaviourally flexible species that relies on learning social cues from their mothers and relatives. Punch will likely integrate into his new social circumstances.

Research on wild and free-ranging Japanese macaques helps us understand Punch’s story and demonstrates the importance of research on animal welfare in zoos, on wildlife behaviour and in conservation science.

Sarah E. Turner and students in her lab receive funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada – Discovery Grants Program and Leadership in Environmental and Digital innovation for Sustainability (LEADS-CREATE), MITACS Globalink Research Awards, the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, and Concordia University.

Brogan M. Stewart receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies, Leadership in Environmental and Digital innovation for Sustainability (LEADS-CREATE), MITACS Globalink Research Awards, the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, and Concordia University.

Megan M. Joyce receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada – Discovery Grants Program and Leadership in Environmental and Digital innovation for Sustainability (LEADS-CREATE), MITACS Globalink Research Awards, the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, and Concordia University.

Mikaela Gerwing receives funding from the Fonds de recherche du Quebec – Nature et Technologies, Leadership for Environmental Innovation for Sustainability (LEADS-CREATE), Miriam Aaron Roland Fellowship, MITACS Globalink Research Awards, the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, Concordia University. She is affiliated with Planet Madagascar.

– ref. Wild macaques don’t abandon babies. So why did Punch’s mother? – https://theconversation.com/wild-macaques-dont-abandon-babies-so-why-did-punchs-mother-277065