Abstract: Every animal species has particular environmental requirements that are essential for its welfare, and when these so-called “basic needs” are not fulfilled, the animals suffer. The basic needs of horses have been claimed to be social contact, social companionship, free movement and access to roughage. To assess whether horses suffer when one or more of the four proposed basic needs are restricted, we examined several studies (n = 38) that reported behavioural and physiological reactions to these restrictions. We assigned the studies according to the four types of responses investigated: (a) Stress, (b) Active, (c) Passive, and (d) Abnormal Behaviour. Furthermore, the number of studies indicating that horses reacted to the restrictions were compared with the number of studies reporting no reaction. The limited number of studies available on single management restrictions did not allow conclusions to be drawn on the effect of each restriction separately, especially in the case of social companionship. However, when combinations of social contact, free movement and access to roughage were restricted, many of the horses had developed responses consistent with suffering. Passive Responses, indicating acute suffering, and Abnormal Behaviour, indicating suffering currently or at some time in the past, were especially clearly demonstrated. This provides further evidence of the usefulness of assessing behavioural parameters in combination with physiological measurements when evaluating horse welfare. This meta-analysis of the literature confirms that it is justified to claim that social contact, free movement and access to roughage are basic needs in horses.

Abstract: There are numerous reports of novel learned behaviour patterns in animal populations, yet the factors influencing the invention and spread of these innovations remain poorly understood. Here we investigated to what extent the pattern of spread of innovations in captive groups of starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, could be predicted by knowledge of individual and social group variables, including association patterns, social rank orders, measures of neophobia and asocial learning performance. We presented small groups of starlings with a series of novel extractive foraging tasks and recorded the latency for each bird to contact and solve each task, as well as the orders of contacting and solving. We then explored which variables best predicted the observed diffusion patterns. Object neophobia and social rank measures characterized who was the first of the group to contact the novel foraging tasks, and the subsequent spread of contacting tasks was associated with latency to feed in a novel environment. Asocial learning performance, measured in isolation, predicted who was the first solver of the novel foraging tasks in each group. Association patterns did not predict the spread of solving. Contact latency and solving duration were negatively correlated, consistent with social learning underlying the spread of solving. Our findings indicate that we can improve our understanding of the diffusion dynamics of innovations in animal groups by investigating group-dependent and individual variables in combination. We introduce novel methods for exploring predictors of the origin and spread of behavioural innovations that could be widely applied.

Abstract: Summary Many publications documenting large-scale trends in the distribution of species make use of opportunistic citizen data, that is, observations of species collected without standardized field protocol and without explicit sampling design. It is a challenge to achieve reliable estimates of distribution trends from them, because opportunistic citizen science data may suffer from changes in field efforts over time (observation bias), from incomplete and selective recording by observers (reporting bias) and from geographical bias. These, in addition to detection bias, may lead to spurious trends. We investigated whether occupancy models can correct for the observation, reporting and detection biases in opportunistic data. Occupancy models use detection/nondetection data and yield estimates of the percentage of occupied sites (occupancy) per year. These models take the imperfect detection of species into account. By correcting for detection bias, they may simultaneously correct for observation and reporting bias as well. We compared trends in occupancy (or distribution) of butterfly and dragonfly species derived from opportunistic data with those derived from standardized monitoring data. All data came from the same grid squares and years, in order to avoid any geographical bias in this comparison. Distribution trends in opportunistic and monitoring data were well-matched. Strong trends observed in monitoring data were rarely missed in opportunistic data. Synthesis and applications. Opportunistic data can be used for monitoring purposes if occupancy models are used for analysis. Occupancy models are able to control for the common biases encountered with opportunistic data, enabling species trends to be monitored for species groups and regions where it is not feasible to collect standardized data on a large scale. Opportunistic data may thus become an important source of information to track distribution trends in many groups of species.

Abstract: Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether nonprimate mammals experience a similar motivational state. To test for empathically motivated pro-social behavior in rodents, we placed a free rat in an arena with a cagemate trapped in a restrainer. After several sessions, the free rat learned to intentionally and quickly open the restrainer and free the cagemate. Rats did not open empty or object-containing restrainers. They freed cagemates even when social contact was prevented. When liberating a cagemate was pitted against chocolate contained within a second restrainer, rats opened both restrainers and typically shared the chocolate. Thus, rats behave pro-socially in response to a conspecific�s distress, providing strong evidence for biological roots of empathically motivated helping behavior.

Abstract: Abstract: The relationship between degree of social bonding (extent of association among individuals) and level of aggression in ruminants is unclear. I examined social bonding and aggression in three groups of female Roosevelt elk (Cervus elaphus roosevelti) over 2 years. I hypothesized that when animals are socially bonded, bouts of aggression will be won by the individual initiating the aggression, occur quickly, and involve little physical contact, and the level of aggression does not correlate with group size. The degree of social bonding was high among individuals in all groups. Dyads of known individuals were together >80% of the time. A permutation analysis indicated that groups with the observed sizes had <0.001 chance of random association, except on one occasion when the probability was 0.72 for one group. Using focal-animal sampling, aggressive interactions were won 72% of the time by the initiator, occurred quickly (<5 s), and involved little physical contact, and the level of aggression was not correlated with group size. The level of aggression was, however, significantly lower in one of the groups. This group may have had access to more abundant food resources than the other groups. Socially bonded elk conducted aggressive interactions in a fashion that did not disrupt social stability. Résumé : La relation entre le degré de liaison sociale (importance des associations entre individus) et l`agressivité n`est pas claire chez les ruminants. J`ai étudié les liaisons sociales et l`agressivité chez trois groupes de femelles du Cerf de Roosevelt (Cervus elaphus roosevelti) pendant 2 ans. J`ai posé en hypothèse que, chez les animaux liés socialement, la victoire devrait être emportée par l`individu qui entreprend l`agression, l`agression devrait être de courte durée, se faire avec peu de contacts physiques et la fréquence des agressions ne devrait pas être liée à la taille du groupe. Des paires d`individus passaient plus de 80% de leur temps ensemble. Une analyse des permutations a démontré que, chez les groupes des tailles observées, la probabilité d`une association aléatoire était de moins de 0,001, sauf en un cas où cette probabilité a été évaluée à 0,72 chez un groupe. Par échantillonnage directionnel, j`ai observé que les interactions agressives étaient gagnées par l`individu attaquant 72% du temps, étaient de courte durée (<5 s), se faisaient avec peu de contacts physiques et leur fréquence n`était pas reliée à la taille du groupe. Il y avait cependant moins d`agressivité chez l`un des groupes. Il se peut que ce groupe ait eu accès à plus de ressources alimentaires que les autres. Chez les cerfs liés par des liens sociaux, l`agressivité ne se manifeste pas de façon à déséquilibrer la stabilité sociale.