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Yarnell, K., Hall, C., & Billett, E. (2013). An assessment of the aversive nature of an animal management procedure (clipping) using behavioral and physiological measures. Physiol. Behav., 118, 32–39.
Abstract: Animal management often involves procedures that, while unlikely to cause physical pain, still cause aversive responses. The domestic horse (Equus caballus) regularly has excessive hair clipped off to facilitate its use as a riding/driving animal and this procedure causes adverse behavioral responses in some animals. The aim of this study was to compare behavioral and physiological measures to assess the aversive effect of this procedure. Ten horses were selected on the basis of being either compliant (C: n=5) or non-compliant (NC: n=5) during this procedure. The horses were subjected to a sham clipping procedure (SC: where the blades had been removed from the clippers) for a period of ten minutes. Measures were taken pre, during and post SC (-10min to +30min) and mean values calculated for ALL horses and for C and NC separately. Behavioral activity was scored (scale 1-5) by twenty students from video footage in (phase/group-blind scoring). Heart rate (HR), salivary cortisol and eye temperature were monitored throughout the procedure. The NC horses were found to be significantly more behaviorally active/less relaxed throughout the trial than C horses (p<0.05) with the greatest difference occurring during the SC procedure (p<0.01). NC horses were more active/less relaxed during, compared with pre or post SC (p<0.05), but showed no behavioral difference pre and post SC. HR of the NC horses was higher than that of the C horses throughout the trial but only significantly so after 10min of SC (p<0.01). ALL horses showed a significant increase in HR between +5 and +10min into the procedure (p<0.05). There was a significant increase in salivary cortisol concentration in ALL horses post procedure (p<0.01) with levels peaking at 20minute post SC. No significant differences in salivary cortisol concentration between C and NC were found at any stage of the trial. Eye temperature increased significantly in ALL horses during SC, peaking at +10min into the procedure (p<0.05) and then decreased substantially when SC had ceased (p<0.01). Although no significant differences were found between C and NC per se, there was a significant interaction between group and phase of trial (p<0.05) with the NC group showing a greater decrease in eye temperature post SC. There was a significant positive correlation between changes in salivary cortisol concentration and eye temperature (p<0.01) but no correlation between any of the other measures. Although the behavioral response of C and NC to this procedure was significantly different the physiological responses indicated that ALL horses found the procedure aversive. Eye temperature could be used as an objective and immediate measure of how an animal is responding to a specific situation in order to evaluate management procedures and adapt them where appropriate to reduce the negative impact on animal health and welfare.
Keywords: Thermography; Eye temperature; Cortisol; Horse; Welfare; Clipping
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Pimenta, V., Barroso, I., Boitani, L., & Beja, P. (2018). Risks a la carte: Modelling the occurrence and intensity of wolf predation on multiple livestock species. Biol. Conserva., 228, 331–342.
Abstract: Predation on livestock is a source of human-wildlife conflicts and can undermine the conservation of large carnivores. To design effective mitigation strategies, it is important to understand the determinants of predation across livestock species, which often differ in husbandry practices, vulnerability to predators and economic value. Moreover, attention should be given to both predation occurrence and intensity, because these can have different spatial patterns and predictors. We used spatial risk modelling to quantify factors affecting wolf predation on five livestock species in Portugal. Within the 1619 parishes encompassing the entire wolf range in the country, the national wolf compensation scheme recorded 17,670 predation events in 2009-2015, each involving one or more livestock species: sheep (31.7%), cattle (27.7%), goats (26.8%), horses (14.8%) and donkeys (3.2%). Models built with 2009-2013 data and validated with 2014-2015 data, showed a shared general pattern of predation probability on each species increasing with its own density and proximity to wolf packs. For some species there were positive relations with the density of other livestock species, and with habitat variables such as altitude, and land cover by shrubland and natural pastures. There was also a general pattern for predation intensity on each species increasing with its own density, while proximity to wolf packs had no significant effects. Predation intensity on goats, cattle and horses increased with the use of communal versus private pastures. Our results suggest that although predation may occur wherever wolves coexist with livestock species, high predation intensity is mainly restricted to particular areas where husbandry practices increase the vulnerability of animals, and this is where mitigation efforts should concentrate.
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Imbert, C., Caniglia, R., Fabbri, E., Milanesi, P., Randi, E., Serafini, M., et al. (2016). Why do wolves eat livestock?: Factors influencing wolf diet in northern Italy. Biological Conservation, 195, 156–168.
Abstract: Thanks to protection by law and increasing habitat restoration, wolves (Canis lupus) are currently re-colonizing Europe from the surviving populations of Russia, the Balkan countries, Spain and Italy, raising the need to update conservation strategies. A major conservation issue is to restore connections and gene flow among fragmented populations, thus contrasting the deleterious consequences of isolation. Wolves in Italy are expanding from the Apennines towards the Alps, crossing the Ligurian Mountains (northern Italy) and establishing connections with the Dinaric populations. Wolf expansion is threatened by poaching and incidental killings, mainly due to livestock depredations and conflicts with shepherds, which could limit the establishment of stable populations. Aiming to find out the factors affecting the use of livestock by wolves, in this study we determined the composition of wolf diet in Liguria. We examined 1457 scats collected from 2008 to 2013. Individual scats were genotyped using a non-invasive genetic procedure, and their content was determined using microscopical analyses. Wolves in Liguria consumed mainly wild ungulates (64.4%; in particular wild boar Sus scrofa and roe deer Capreolus capreolus) and, to a lesser extent, livestock (26.3%; in particular goats Capra hircus). We modeled the consumption of livestock using environmental features, wild ungulate community diversity, husbandry characteristics and wolf social organization (stable packs or dispersing individuals). Wolf diet varied according to years and seasons with an overall decrease of livestock and an increase of wild ungulate consumption, but also between packs and dispersing individuals with greater livestock consumption for the latter. The presence of stable packs, instead of dispersing wolves, the adoption of prevention measures on pastures, roe deer abundance, and the percentage of deciduous woods, reduced predation on livestock. Thus, we suggest promoting wild ungulate expansion, the use of prevention tools in pastures, and supporting wolf pack establishment, avoiding lethal control and poaching, to mitigate conflicts between wolf conservation and husbandry.
Keywords: Scat analysis; Feeding ecology; Prey selection; Wolf-human conflicts
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Amici, F., Widdig, A., Lehmann, J., & Majolo, B. (2019). A meta-analysis of interindividual differences in innovation. Anim. Behav., 155, 257–268.
Abstract: The ability to innovate and the social transmission of innovations have played a central role in human evolution. However, innovation is also crucial for other animals, by allowing them to cope with novel socioecological challenges. Although innovation plays such a central role in animals' lives, we still do not know the conditions required for innovative behaviour to emerge. Here, we focused on interindividual differences in innovation by (1) extensively reviewing existing literature on innovative behaviour in animals and (2) quantitatively testing the different evolutionary hypotheses that have been proposed to explain interindividual variation in innovation propensity during foraging tasks. We ran a series of phylogenetically controlled mixed-effects meta-regression models to determine which hypotheses (if any) are supported by currently available empirical studies. Our analyses show that innovation is more common in individuals that are older and belong to the larger sex, but also in more neophilic and/or explorative individuals. Moreover, these effects change depending on the study setting (i.e. wild versus captive). Our results provide no clear support to the excess of energy or the bad competitor hypotheses and suggest that study setting and interindividual differences in traits related to personality are also important predictors of innovation.
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Galef, B. G. (1989). Enduring social enhancement of rats' preferences for the palatable and the piquant. Appetite, 13(2), 81–92.
Abstract: In three experiments on the social induction of food preferences in rats, I found: (a) that eight 30-min exposures of a naive “observer” rat to a “demonstrator” rat fed one of two approximately equipalatable diets produced observer preference for the diet fed to its demonstrator that lasted for more than a month, (b) that simple exposure of naive subjects to a diet itself, rather than to a rat that had eaten a diet, was not sufficient to enhance preference for that diet, and (c) that lasting preference for an unpalatable, piquant diet could also be established by exposing naive rats to demonstrators that had eaten the piquant diet, but not by simply exposure to the piquant diet itself. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis proposed by both Birch and Rozin that social-affective contexts are important in establishing stable, learned preferences for foods.
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Cooper, J. J., & Albentosa, M. J. (2005). Behavioural adaptation in the domestic horse: potential role of apparently abnormal responses including stereotypic behaviour. Livest. Prod. Sci., 92(2), 177–182.
Abstract: Classically, biologists have considered adaptation of behavioural characteristics in terms of long-term functional benefits to the individual, such as survival or reproductive fitness. In captive species, including the domestic horse, this level of explanation is limited, as for the most part, horses are housed in conditions that differ markedly from those in which they evolved. In addition, an individual horse's reproductive fitness is largely determined by man rather than its own behavioural strategies. Perhaps for reasons of this kind, explanations of behavioural adaptation to environmental challenges by domestic animals, including the capacity to learn new responses to these challenges, tend to concentrate on the proximate causes of behaviour. However, understanding the original function of these adaptive responses can help us explain why animals perform apparently novel or functionless activities in certain housing conditions and may help us to appreciate what the animal welfare implications might be. This paper reviews the behavioural adaptation of the domestic horse to captivity and discusses how apparently abnormal behaviour may not only provide a useful practical indicator of specific environmental deficiencies but may also serve the animal as an adaptive response to these deficiencies in an “abnormal” environment.
Keywords: Behavioural adaptation; Horse; Stereotypic behaviour
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Horses' (Equus Caballus) Laterality, Stress Hormones, and Task Related Behavior in Innovative Problem-Solving.
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Outram, A. K., Stear, N. A., Bendrey, R., Olsen, S., Kasparov, A., Zaibert, V., et al. (2009). The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking. Science, 323(5919), 1332–1335.
Abstract: Horse domestication revolutionized transport, communications, and warfare in prehistory, yet the identification of early domestication processes has been problematic. Here, we present three independent lines of evidence demonstrating domestication in the Eneolithic Botai Culture of Kazakhstan, dating to about 3500 B.C.E. Metrical analysis of horse metacarpals shows that Botai horses resemble Bronze Age domestic horses rather than Paleolithic wild horses from the same region. Pathological characteristics indicate that some Botai horses were bridled, perhaps ridden. Organic residue analysis, using δ13C and δD values of fatty acids, reveals processing of mare's milk and carcass products in ceramics, indicating a developed domestic economy encompassing secondary products.
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Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social Facilitation. Science, 149(3681), 269–274.
Abstract: 300 Multiple ChoicesThis is a pdf-only article and there is no markup to show you.full-text.pdf
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Pongrácz, P., Miklósi, Á., Kubinyi, E., Gurobi, K., Topál, J., & Csányi, V. (2001). Social learning in dogs: the effect of a human demonstrator on the performance of dogs in a detour task. Anim. Behav., 62(6), 1109–1117.
Abstract: We recorded the behaviour of dogs in detour tests, in which an object (a favourite toy) or food was placed behind a V-shaped fence. Dogs were able to master this task; however, they did it more easily when they started from within the fence with the object placed outside it. Repeated detours starting from within the fence did not help the dogs to obtain the object more quickly if in a subsequent trial they started outside the fence with the object placed inside it. While six trials were not enough for the dogs to show significant improvement on their own in detouring the fence from outside, demonstration of this action by humans significantly improved the dogs' performance within two-three trials. Owners and strangers were equally effective as demonstrators. Our experiments show that dogs are able to rely on information provided by human action when confronted with a new task. While they did not copy the exact path of the human demonstrator, they easily adopted the detour behaviour shown by humans to reach their goal.
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