Animal welfare research funding determines which welfare problems get studied and which remain poorly understood, with significant gaps particularly in wild animal, invertebrate and low-income country welfare.
Research funding allocation reflects and perpetuates priorities - welfare problems that attract funding get studied, understood and addressed, while underfunded areas remain in the dark. The most significant gaps are in wild animal welfare (understanding suffering at population scale, identifying tractable interventions), invertebrate welfare (establishing evidence for sentience across taxa), and global south farm animal welfare (conditions and interventions in low-income country systems). These gaps are not failures of individual researchers but of funding priorities. Philanthropic organisations and government funders that direct resources toward high-priority welfare research gaps can accelerate understanding of the most underexplored welfare problems affecting the largest numbers of sentient animals.