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Lingle, S., Rendall, D., Wilson, W. F., DeYoung, R. W., & Pellis, S. M. (2007). Altruism and recognition in the antipredator defence of deer: 2. Why mule deer help nonoffspring fawns. Anim. Behav., 73(5), 907–916.
Abstract: Both white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, and mule deer, O. hemionus, females defend fawns against coyotes, Canis latrans, but only mule deer defend nonoffspring conspecific and heterospecific fawns. During a predator attack, females may have to decide whether to defend a fawn while having imperfect information on its identity obtained from hearing a few distress calls. Although imperfect recognition can influence altruistic behaviour, few empirical studies have considered this point when testing functional explanations for altruism. We designed a series of playback experiments with fawn distress calls to test alternative hypotheses (by-product of parental care, kin selection, reciprocal altruism) for the mule deer's defence of nonoffspring, specifically allowing for the possibility that females mistake these fawns for their own. White-tailed deer females approached the speaker only when distress calls of white-tailed deer fawns were played and when their own fawn was hidden, suggesting that fawn defence was strictly a matter of parental care in this species. In contrast, mule deer females responded similarly and strongly, regardless of the caller's identity, the female's reproductive state (mother or nonmother) or the presence of their own offspring. The failure of mule deer females to adjust their responses to these conditions suggests that they do not defend nonoffspring because they mistake them for their own fawns. The lack of behavioural discrimination also suggests that kin selection, reciprocal altruism and defence of the offspring's area are unlikely to explain the mule deer's defence of nonoffspring. We identify causal and functional questions that still need to be addressed to understand why mule deer defend fawns so indiscriminately.
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Massen, J., Sterck, E., & de Vos, H. (2010). Close social associations in animals and humans: functions and mechanisms of friendship (Vol. 147).
Abstract: Both humans and group-living animals associate and behave affiliatively more with some individuals than others. Human friendship has long been acknowledged, and recently scientists studying animal behaviour have started using the term friendship for close social associates in animals. Yet, while biologists describe friends as social tools to enhance fitness, social scientists describe human friendship as unconditional. We investigate whether these different descriptions reflect true differences in human friendship and animal close social associations or are a by-product of different research approaches: namely social scientists focussing on proximate and biologists on ultimate explanations. We first stress the importance of similar measures to determine close social associations, thereafter examine their ultimate benefits and proximate motivations, and discuss the latest findings on the central-neural regulation of social bonds. We conclude that both human friendship and animal close social associations are ultimately beneficial. On the proximate level, motivations for friendship in humans and for close social associations in animals are not necessarily based on benefits and are often unconditional. Moreover, humans share with many animals a similar physiological basis of sociality. Therefore, biologists and social scientist describe the same phenomenon, and the use of the term friendship for animals seems justified.
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Miller, G. (2006). Animal behavior. Signs of empathy seen in mice. Science, 312(5782), 1860–1861.
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Goursot, C., Düpjan, S., Puppe, B., & Leliveld, L. M. C. (2021). Affective styles and emotional lateralization: A promising framework for animal welfare research. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 237, 105279.
Abstract: The growing recognition of animals as individuals has broader implications for farm animal welfare research. Even under highly standardized on-farm conditions, farm animals show heterogeneous but individually consistent behavioural patterns towards various stimuli, based on how they appraise these stimuli. As a result, animal welfare is likely to be highly individual as well, and studying the proximate mechanisms underlying distinct individual behaviour patterns and appraisal will improve animal welfare research. We propose to extend the framework of affective styles to bridge the gap between existing research fields on animal personality and affective states. Affective styles refer to consistent individual differences in emotional reactivity and regulation and can be predicted by baseline cerebral lateralization. Likewise, animals with consistent left or right motor biases--a proxy measure of individual patterns in cerebral lateralization--have been shown to differ in their personality, emotional reactivity, motivational tendencies or coping styles. In this paper, we present the current knowledge of the links between laterality and stable individual traits in behaviour and affect in light of hypotheses on emotional lateralization. Within our suggested framework, we make recommendations on how to investigate affective styles in non-human animals and give practical examples. This approach has the potential to promote a science of affective styles in nonhuman animals and significantly advance research on animal welfare.
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