This sensitivity to interspecific signals has been neglected, despite its importance in so much research. WHAT animals attend to. 3.4 Human ability to interpret animal signals is, at best, mixed. But Schusterman et al. make the counterpoint that sometimes the only way one can work with a species is by understanding and using their social cues. The conventional wisdom seems to be that one should interact with experimental animals as little as possible.
Several chapters detail how bonds can be minimized.
Boccia et al. Paradoxically, one way to do this is by developing some sort of relationship with the animals. Some scientists make a conscious commitment to work closely, almost intimately, with their animals, thereby exploiting the bond. As this book's title suggests, avoiding them might be impossible anyway. So if there's a gain to be made by bonding with one's animals, it's worth considering the question of just how pervasive bonding is.