Abstract: Animal welfare, or well-being, is a social issue with ethical, scientific, political, and aesthetic properties. Answering questions about the welfare of animals requires scientific definition, assessment, solutions, and public acceptance. With respect to the actual well-being of the animal, most issues are centered on how the animal “feels” when managed within a specific level of confinement, during special agricultural practices (e.g., tail docking, beak trimming, etc.) and handling. Questions of this nature may require exploration of animal cognition, motivation, perception, and emotional states in addition to more commonly recognized indicators of well-being. Several general approaches have emerged for solving problems concerning animal well-being in intensive production systems: environmental, genetic, and therapeutic. Environmental approaches involve modifying existing systems to accommodate specific welfare concerns or development of alternative systems. Genetic approaches involve changing the behavioral and (or) physiological nature of the animal to reduce or eliminate behaviors that are undesirable within intensive system. Therapeutic approaches of a physical (tail docking, beak trimming) and physiological (drug and nutritional therapy) nature bring both concern and promise with regard to the reduction of confinement stress. Finally, the recent focus on commodity quality assurance programs may indirectly provide benefits for animal well-being. Although research in the area of animal well-being will provide important information for better animal management, handling, care, and the physical design of intensive production systems there is still some uncertainty regarding public acceptance. The aesthetics of modern intensive production systems may have as much to do with public acceptance as with science.

Abstract: Six horses, highly trained for dressage competition, were used to study the stride kinematics of the walk, and to compare the kinematics of the collected, medium, and extended walks. Horses were filmed in a sagittal plane at a rate of 150 frames/s; temporal, linear, and angular data were extracted from the films. Results of ANOVA and Duncan's multiple range test indicated that the speed of the collected walk (1.37 m/s) was significantly (P < 0.01) slower than that of the medium (1.73 m/s) and extended (1.82 m/s) walks, values for which were not significantly different from each other. The increase in speed was associated with a significant increase in stride length, from 157 cm in the collected walk to 193 cm in the extended walk. This was a result of an increase in the over-tracking distance, whereas there was no significant difference in the distance between lateral placements of the limbs. Stride duration decreased (P < 0.01) from the collected walk (1,159 ms) to the extended walk (1,064 ms). Angles of the metacarpal and metatarsal segments, measured on the palmar/ plantar aspect, were higher at impact and lower at lift off in the collected than in the extended walk (P < 0.01). This indicated greater range of angular motion of this segment during the stance phase in the extended walk. Only 1 of the 6 horses had a regular 4-beat rhythm of the footfalls, with equal time elapsing between the lateral and diagonal footfalls.

Abstract: Models of inter-sexual selection generally assume heritable variation in mating preferences among females within populations. However, little is known about the nature of such variation. The aim of this study was to characterize quantitatively the phenotypic variation in female preference for a sexually selected male trait, body colour pattern, within a population of the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata. Significantly more female guppies preferred the more brightly coloured of two similar-sized males presented simultaneously as potential mates. Mating preference scores for individual females were significantly and positively correlated between two repeated trials on successive days. Females were thus individually consistent in their particular choice of mates, and the calculated repeatability of their mating preference was relatively high. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, significant variation existed among females in the degree of their preference for brightly coloured males. Individual mating preference scores were not normally distributed, but were rather skewed to the right (i.e. towards greater values). These results suggest that additive genetic variation for mating preferences based on male colour pattern is maintained, and the opportunity for the further evolution of both bright male colour patterns and female preference for this trait appears to exist in the study population from the Quare River, Trinidad.

Abstract: The social behaviour of adult female mountain goats, Oreamnos americanus, was studied for 2 years in an unhunted population in west-central Alberta, Canada. Compared with other female ungulates, mountain goat females interacted aggressively much more frequently and their dominance ranks were less stable in time and less age-related. Goats were organized in a non-linear but non-random dominance hierarchy, with many reversals in rank. The best morphological predictor of dominance rank was horn length one year and body mass in the following year. Age was a weaker predictor of dominance status than what has been reported for other female ungulates. The ranks of individual goats changed between years and dominance rank one year was not a good predictor of rank the following year. These results suggest that linearity may only be possible when a contested resource can be defended. Dominant female goats did not forage more efficiently than subordinate goats, and dominant status did not affect the amount of time devoted to alert behaviour.

Abstract: The foraging decisions that individuals make within groups should depend on the information available to them. An aviary experiment was conducted to examine whether a starling's, Sturnus vulgaris, decisions either to approach and feed from (scrounge) or to avoid the patches exploited by a partner bird are influenced by the information the partner provides. Both the type of information a subject could recognize and the point at which this information became available during the partner's exploitation of a patch were manipulaed. Information concerning the quality of a patch was available in the form of a concealed colour cue and from the behaviour of the partner bird. The foraging environment was manipulated such that colour cues were either present or absent, and provided either correct or incorrect information concerning the presence of food. When cues corresponded with past foraging experience, test subjects responded selectively and profitably to the patch exploitations of the partner; they scrounged from a higher proportion of profitable patches than control birds, which lacked the ability to recognize colour cues. Test subjects also arrived more quickly at profitable patches that the partner bird discovered than did control birds; and consequently, were able to obtain more food at each food patch scrounged. Finally, test subjects avoided scrounging when the partner discovered empty patches and thus saved foraging time. Responding selectively to public information, therefore, allows an individual to compete more effectively for resources within a foraging group.