For decades, veterinary medicine focused primarily on the physical ailments of animals. A broken bone, a viral infection, or a parasitic outbreak was diagnosed and treated using strictly biomedical tools. However, modern veterinary medicine recognizes that a physical body cannot be fully healed or understood without looking at the mind.

The marriage of behavior and veterinary science applies to every species, though the context changes.

For dairy and poultry vets, behavior equals profit. Lame dairy cows lie down longer and eat less, dropping milk production. Tail-biting in pigs is a behavioral catastrophe driven by stress and nutrition. A veterinarian who ignores the social behavior of a herd will fail to control disease outbreaks. Sick animals behave differently; detecting disease behavior (huddling, anorexia, isolation) is the first step in a herd health plan.