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Gaunitz, C., Fages, A., Hanghøj, K., Albrechtsen, A., Khan, N., Schubert, M., et al. (2018). Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski's horses. Science, 360(6384), 111–114.
Abstract: The Eneolithic Botai culture of the Central Asian steppes provides the earliest archaeological evidence for horse husbandry, ~5,500 ya, but the exact nature of early horse domestication remains controversial. We generated 42 ancient horse genomes, including 20 from Botai. Compared to 46 published ancient and modern horse genomes, our data indicate that Przewalski's horses are the feral descendants of horses herded at Botai and not truly wild horses. All domestic horses dated from ~4,000 ya to present only show ~2.7% of Botai-related ancestry. This indicates that a massive genomic turnover underpins the expansion of the horse stock that gave rise to modern domesticates, which coincides with large-scale human population expansions during the Early Bronze Age.
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Koistinen, T., Korhonen, H. T., Hämäläinen, E., & Mononen, J. (2016). Blue foxes' (Vulpes lagopus) motivation to gain access and interact with various resources. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 176, 105–111.
Abstract: We analysed the willingness of blue foxes (Vulpes lagopus) to work for and utilise five resources: a platform, wooden block, sand floor, nest box and empty space. Ten juvenile blue fox males were housed singly in apparatus consisting of three cages connected with one-way doors through the walls in between the cages and subjected to work for each of the five resources, one at a time. The resource was placed in one of the outermost cages of the apparatus. Force needed to open the door leading to the resource cage was increased daily by 0.25 or 0.5kg. The number of daily entries, visit durations and interaction with the resource were recorded on workloads of 0, 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 5, 6.5, and 8kg of extra weight. The latency to start interacting with the resource after entering the resource cage was measured on a workload of 3.5kg. The mean number of daily entries in the resource and the other outermost, i.e. control cage varied from 7 to 28 and from 17 to 44, respectively. The increasing workload decreased the number of entries in the resource cage, increased those in the control cage (Linear Mixed Model: F1,638=79.5, P<0.001) and lengthened the visit durations in both cages (F1,642=7.2, P<0.01). The foxes made most (F4,643=9.0, P<0.001) and shortest (F4,641=2.8, P<0.05) visits to the outermost cages when the available resource was either a platform or empty space. The visit durations were longest when the available resource was a nest box. The foxes interacted regularly with the wooden block, but five foxes were not observed interacting with the platform. The nest box was utilised approximately 50% of the time spent in the resource cage, while the platform was utilised only 1-6% and wooden block 2-17% of the time. The mean latency to start interacting with the resource after entering the resource cage was shortest for the sand floor (8s) and longest for the platform (113s, F3,335=26.3, P<0.001). The results show that the foxes re-scheduled their activities on increasing workloads in the apparatus. Based on the number of entries and visit durations, blue foxes valued the wooden block, nest box and sand floor more than the platform or an empty cage. After entering the resource cage, the foxes started interacting fastest with the sand floor, showing high motivation to interact. After entering the resource cage, the foxes make use of the roof of the nest box more urgently than the interior of the nest box. Long bouts in the cage with nest box indicate resting behaviour.
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Hoppitt, W., & Laland, K. N. (2008). Social processes influencing learning in animals: a review of the evidence. Adv Study Behav, 38, 105–165.
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Klingel, H. (1998). Observations on social organization and behaviour of African and Asiatic Wild Asses (Equus africanus and Equus hemionus). Appl Anim Behav Sci, 60(2), 103–113.
Abstract: 1This paper appears with kind permission of Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin and Hamburg. It was originally published in Z. Tierpsychol., 44, 323-331 (1977), ISSN 0044-3573/ASTM-Coden: ZETIAG.1
Abstract
African and Asiatic Wild Asses (Equus africanus and Equus hemionus) live in unstable groups or herds of variable composition. Some of the adult stallions are territorial in large territories in which they tolerate other ♂♂. The territorial ♂♂ are dominant over all their conspecifics
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Jørgensen, G. H. M., Liestøl, S. H. - O., & Bøe, K. E. (2011). Effects of enrichment items on activity and social interactions in domestic horses (Equus caballus). Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 129(2), 100–110.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the use of items intended to provide enrichment during turnout, both for individual and group kept horses in an attempt to reduce the amount of passive behaviours. The study was divided into two parts, where study 1 involved eight horses rotated through eight individual paddocks, each containing one of seven enrichment items and one paddock being kept without item, functioning as a control. The horses' item-directed behaviours; passive behaviours or other non-item related activities were scored using instantaneous sampling, every minute for 1h at the beginning and the end of the turnout period. Study 2 involved six horse groups (3-6 horses) and the same scoring methods and ethogram as in study 1. The four items that the horses interacted the most with during study 1 (straw STRA, ball filled with concentrates CBALL, branches BRAN and scratching pole POLE) are investigated in study 2. In addition, the amount of social interactions was recorded. Both horses kept individually (P<0.05) and in groups (P<0.0001) performed significantly more item-directed behaviours towards edible items like STRA and CBALL than other objects. There was, however, no overall relation between the numbers of item-directed behaviours and the number of passive behaviours observed, indicating that the enrichment items did not alone reduce the amount of passive behaviours during turnout periods. Such a reduction was, however, only apparent when horses spent more time eating green leaves growing on the paddock surface (R=-0.97 study 1, R=-0.67 study 2, P<0.0001). Access to STRA in group kept horses also seemed to reduce the amount of agonistic behaviours (P<0.0001). In conclusion, if grass is not available in paddocks, the provision of roughage reduces the amount of passive behaviours in singly kept horses and it also reduces the risk of agonistic interactions between horses kept in group.
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McDonnell, S. (1999). Understanding horse behavior. Your guide to horse health care and management. Lexington, KY 40544-4038: Blood-Horse Inc.
Abstract: The author has conducted much research on equine behaviour, and here presents her findings in a form suitable for owners of horses. Common behavioural problems are mentioned.
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Brust, V., & Guenther, A. (2015). Domestication effects on behavioural traits and learning performance: comparing wild cavies to guinea pigs. Anim. Cogn., 18(1), 99–109.
Abstract: The domestication process leads to a change in behavioural traits, usually towards individuals that are less attentive to changes in their environment and less aggressive. Empirical evidence for a difference in cognitive performance, however, is scarce. Recently, a functional linkage between an individual's behaviour and cognitive performance has been proposed in the framework of animal personalities via a shared risk-reward trade-off. Following this assumption, bolder and more aggressive animals (usually the wild form) should learn faster. Differences in behaviour may arise during ontogeny due to individual experiences or represent adaptations that occurred over the course of evolution. Both might singly or taken together account for differences in cognitive performance between wild and domestic lineages. To test for such possible linkages, we compared wild cavies and domestic guinea pigs, both kept in a university stock for more than 30 years under highly comparable conditions. Animals were tested in three behavioural tests as well as for initial and reversal learning performance. Guinea pigs were less bold and aggressive than their wild congeners, but learnt an association faster. Additionally, the personality structure was altered during the domestication process. The most likely explanation for these findings is that a shift in behavioural traits and their connectivity led to an altered cognitive performance. A functional linkage between behavioural and cognitive traits seems to exist in the proposed way only under natural selection, but not in animals that have been selected artificially over centuries.
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Bateson, P. (2014). Play, playfulness, creativity and innovation. Anim. Behav. Cogn., 1(2), 99–112.
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Burla, J. - B., Siegwart, J., & Nawroth, C. (2018). Human Demonstration Does Not Facilitate the Performance of Horses (Equus caballus) in a Spatial Problem-Solving Task. Animal, 8(6), 96.
Abstract: Horses’ ability to adapt to new environments and to acquire new information plays an important role in handling and training. Social learning in particular would be very adaptive for horses as it enables them to flexibly adjust to new environments. In the context of horse handling, social learning from humans has been rarely investigated but could help to facilitate management practices. We assessed the impact of human demonstration on the spatial problem-solving abilities of horses during a detour task. In this task, a bucket with a food reward was placed behind a double-detour barrier and 16 horses were allocated to two test groups of 8 horses each. One group received a human demonstration of how to solve the spatial task while the other group received no demonstration. We found that horses did not solve the detour task more often or faster with human demonstration. However, both test groups improved rapidly over trials. Our results suggest that horses prefer to use individual rather than social information when solving a spatial problem-solving task
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McBride, S. D., Parker, M. O., Roberts, K., & Hemmings, A. (2017). Applied neurophysiology of the horse; implications for training, husbandry and welfare. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 190, 90–101.
Abstract: Understanding the neural circuits underlying equine behaviour has the potential to help optimise strategies of husbandry and training. This review discusses two areas of neurophysiological research in a range of species and relates this information to the horse. The first discussion focuses on mechanisms of learning and motivation and assesses how this information can be applied to improve the training of the horse. The second concerns the identification of the equine neurophysiological phenotype, through behavioural and genetic probes, as a way of improving strategies for optimal equine husbandry and training success. The review finishes by identifying directions for future research with an emphasis on how neurophysiological systems (and thus behaviour) can be modified through strategic husbandry. This review highlights how a neurophysioloigical understanding of horse behaviour can play an important role in attaining the primary objectives of equitation science as well as improving the welfare of the horse.
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