Victoria Braithwaite facts for kids

Victoria A. Braithwaite (born July 19, 1967 – died September 30, 2019) was a British scientist. She was a professor who studied animal behavior and how animals think at Pennsylvania State University. She was the first person to show that fish can feel pain. This discovery was very important for how we think about animal welfare. It also led to new rules for how fish are treated in labs and by people who fish in the UK, Europe, and Canada.

Victoria's Early Life and Schooling

Victoria Braithwaite was born in a city called Bradford in England. She grew up with six brothers and sisters. Her mother, June Pickles, was a judge, and her father, Alan Braithwaite, ran a company.

Victoria went to Bradford Grammar School. Even though some people didn't think she should, she decided to apply to the University of Oxford. She studied zoology there and earned her first degree. Later, she also got her PhD (a higher degree) from Somerville College, Oxford.

For her PhD, Victoria studied homing pigeons. She found out that these birds fly back to their nests faster if they have seen the area around them before they are let go. After Oxford, she worked at the University of Glasgow. There, she studied how smart salmon are. This is when she became very interested in how animals behave.

Discoveries About Animal Thinking

Victoria Braithwaite spent her career learning about how fish and other animals think. She discovered that fish living in calm places, like ponds, use things they can see to find their way. But fish in rivers learn directions by remembering a series of turns, like left, then right.

Her research was the first to show that an animal's thinking skills are shaped by the environment they live in. Because of her important work on how animals find their way, Victoria was chosen to be part of the Royal Institute of Navigation in 2005.

Do Fish Feel Pain?

In 1995, Victoria moved to the University of Edinburgh. This is where she started to study if fish could feel pain. Before her work, scientists knew that animals like chickens and sheep felt pain. But they weren't sure about fish.

Victoria did many experiments to show that fish do feel pain. First, she found that fish have the right body parts, called nociceptors, to sense pain. These are like tiny sensors that tell the brain when something hurts. She also showed that fish can make their own pain-killers, just like mammals do.

Next, she tested how fish reacted to things that would cause pain. She showed that fish act differently when they are exposed to something unpleasant. For example, if fish were given something like vinegar, they behaved in a different way. She even showed that fish given human pain-killers acted more normally after being exposed to something unpleasant.

Her amazing work changed the rules for how fish are treated. This included rules in labs and for fishing in the UK, Europe, and Canada. Other countries also started to think about making similar changes because of her discoveries.

Fish in Their Environment

In 2007, Victoria Braithwaite joined Pennsylvania State University. There, she became a professor who studied fish and biology. She showed that if fish are raised in a more natural environment, it helps them think better. It also helps them survive when they are released into the wild. Before her work, many fish raised in tanks did not survive when they were put into natural waters.

In 2015, Victoria visited the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. While there, she looked at what we can learn about pain and other feelings in animals. She was offered a big leadership job at a research institute in 2018, but she was unable to take it.

Awards and Special Recognitions

Victoria Braithwaite received several awards for her important work:

• 2005: She became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.
• 2006: She won the FSBI Medal from the Fisheries Society of the British Isles.
• 2016: She became a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

Victoria's Personal Life

Victoria Braithwaite married Andrew Read, who was also a scientist, in 1992. They later divorced but had two sons together. In 2015, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Victoria passed away on September 30, 2019.