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Wolff, A., Hausberger, M., & Le Scolan, N. (1997). Experimental tests to assess emotionality in horses. Behav. Process., 40(3), 209–221.
Abstract: Different tests were used to assess different aspects of the emotionality of 1-3 year-old horses: arena test; a [`]novel object' test; and a handling test. In reaction to the test situations no important differences were observed according to age or sex in the behaviour patterns, but clear individual differences were observed within these classes. The arena test seemed to reveal the degree of gregariousness of the animals whereas the results in the two other tests were correlated and seemed to reflect an inherent degree of fearfulness in the horse. Indices were developed that enabled to rank the animals, by taking into account all behaviour patterns shown. Such individual characteristics might have some genetic basis: half-siblings tended to behave the same way in most cases.
Keywords: Emotivity; Gregariousness; Horse; Neophobia; Open-field
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Le Scolan, N., Hausberger, M., & Wolff, A. (1997). Stability over situations in temperamental traits of horses as revealed by experimental and scoring approaches. Behav. Process., 41(3), 257–266.
Abstract: Individual behavioural reactions of adult horses in a variety of experimental tests were compared with ratings by riding teachers. The tests were made in a non working situation, with the animals being released in an arena, a box (arena test, new object test, learning tests) or handled (new object/handling situation). The traits rated by teachers were fearfulness, nervousness, gregariousness and learning abilities at work (ridden or handled). Despite a great homogeneity in the reactions exhibited by the horses in the different situations, large individual differences were present. Correlations appeared between the reactivity in the arena test and the score of gregariousness, between the reactivity in the novel object test and the rating of nervousness when ridden, between the results in the handling test and the rating of general fearfulness and between the ability to memorise an instrumental task and the score of general learning ability. Such results strengthen the idea that there are underlying behavioural dispositions that are stable across situations and that the experimental tests may be good predictors of the temperament in untrained animals.
Keywords: Behavioural tests; Horse; Ratings; Temperament
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Jacobs, A., Maumy, M., & Petit, O. (2008). The influence of social organisation on leadership in brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus fulvus) in a controlled environment. Behav. Process., 79(2), 111–113.
Abstract: Studies on leadership during group movements in several lemur species showed that females were responsible for the travelling choices concerning time and direction. Interestingly, in these species females are dominant over males. We investigated the influence of social organisation upon leadership processes by studying a lemur species in which social organisation is characterized by the absence of female dominance: the brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus fulvus). The study was conducted on a semi-free ranging group of 11 individuals and the analysis performed on 69 group movements showed that all the individuals could initiate a group movement. In 34 cases, the whole group moved. There was no significant difference in the number of start attempts or in the number of group members involved from one initiator to another. Moreover, there was no effect of sex or age of the initiator on the number of individuals following it or on the speed of the joining process. Therefore, the leadership observed is widely distributed to all group members. These results support the hypothesis of an influence of social organisation upon the decision-making processes but still remain to be studied in a more relevant ecological context.
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Virányi, Z., Topál, J., Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á., & Csányi, V. (2004). Dogs respond appropriately to cues of humans' attentional focus. Behav. Process., 66(2), 161–172.
Abstract: Dogs' ability to recognise cues of human visual attention was studied in different experiments. Study 1 was designed to test the dogs' responsiveness to their owner's tape-recorded verbal commands (Down!) while the Instructor (who was the owner of the dog) was facing either the dog or a human partner or none of them, or was visually separated from the dog. Results show that dogs were more ready to follow the command if the Instructor attended them during instruction compared to situations when the Instructor faced the human partner or was out of sight of the dog. Importantly, however, dogs showed intermediate performance when the Instructor was orienting into 'empty space' during the re-played verbal commands. This suggests that dogs are able to differentiate the focus of human attention. In Study 2 the same dogs were offered the possibility to beg for food from two unfamiliar humans whose visual attention (i.e. facing the dog or turning away) was systematically varied. The dogs' preference for choosing the attentive person shows that dogs are capable of using visual cues of attention to evaluate the human actors' responsiveness to solicit food-sharing. The dogs' ability to understand the communicatory nature of the situations is discussed in terms of their social cognitive skills and unique evolutionary history.
Keywords: Animals; *Attention; Bonding, Human-Pet; Communication; *Cues; Dogs; Humans; Recognition (Psychology)
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Cloutier, S., Newberry, R. C., & Honda, K. (2004). Comparison of social ranks based on worm-running and aggressive behaviour in young domestic fowl. Behav. Process., 65(1), 79–86.
Abstract: Worm-running is behaviour in which a chick runs carrying a worm-like object while flock mates follow and attempt to grab the object from its beak. We hypothesised that social ranks based on worm-running frequency are stable over time and are positively correlated with social ranks based on success in aggressive interactions when older. At 8-12 days of age, we scored worm-running in 17 groups of 12 female White Leghorn chicks during three 10-min tests. Based on instantaneous scans at 5-s intervals, the bird carrying the `worm' most often was placed in rank one and so on down the rank order. These tests were repeated at 68-70 days of age. An aggression index for each bird was calculated as the number of aggressive acts given, divided by the number given and received, during three 1-h observation periods when the birds were 68-70 days. Ranks obtained in worm-running tests were positively correlated over the two age periods (P<0.05) but were not correlated with ranks based on the aggression index (P>0.05). Our results indicate that worm-running ranks are not predictive of success in aggressive interactions. Instead, worm-running fits some criteria for play.
Keywords: Aggression; Social behaviour; Dominance; Play; Chickens; Animal welfare
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Levin, L. E. (1996). Passage order through different pathways in groups of schooling fish, and the diversified leadership hypothesis. Behav. Process., 37(1), 1–8.
Abstract: The diversified leadership hypothesis proposes that different individuals within a school of fish act as leaders in different circumstances. This `circumstantial leadership' results from inter-individual behavioral variability and a `cohesion-dispersion' tendency modulated by `failure-success' contingencies. The hypothesis predicts that when offered different pathways to escape the restriction of their swimming space, individuals within a group of fish will show 1. (a) consistent passage orders in each pathway, but2. (b) different passage orders in different pathways. Using an avoidance paddle and three different groups of fish (Aphyocharax erithrurus) the results confirmed prediction 1. (a) while prediction2. (b) was verified only in one group.
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Barnard, C. J., & Luo, N. (2002). Acquisition of dominance status affects maze learning in mice. Behav. Process., 60(1), 53–59.
Abstract: Learning is likely to be costly and thus subject to trade-off with other components of life history. An obvious prediction, therefore, is that investment in learning, and thus learning performance, will vary with individual life history strategy and the reproductive value of the learning outcome. We tested this idea in the context of social dominance in male laboratory mice, using a simple radial maze paradigm to compare the ability of high- and low-ranking male mice to track changing food location. We tested animals in randomly selected pairs before and after establishing aggressive rank relationships to distinguish intrinsic differences in learning ability from those attributable to acquiring high or low rank. There was no difference in learning between later dominants and subordinates prior to establishing rank relationships. After pairing, however, dominants showed a significantly greater percentage of correct responses, with the difference being greatest earlier in a sequence of trials. The percentage of correct responses also increased with the amount of aggression initiated during pairing. The results thus appeared to reflect a state-dependent change in learning associated with the aggressive social relationships formed during pairing.
Keywords: Social status; Learning; Radial maze; Mouse
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Macuda, T., & Timney, B. (1999). Luminance and chromatic discrimination in the horse (Equus caballus). Behav. Process., 44(3), 301–307.
Abstract: Equine colour vision was measured under conditions that minimised the possibility of animals using brightness cues to make chromatic discriminations. In a two-stage study, we first obtained luminance discrimination functions for achromatic targets then tested for chromatic discrimination over a range of target luminances. Horses were trained on a two-choice discrimination task. The positive stimulus was varied in luminance and/or colour using neutral density and broad band colour filters. The negative stimulus appeared as a uniform grey. In the brightness discrimination task, the horses performed well at large luminance differences but their percentage of correct responses declined to near chance levels at differences of less than 0.2 log units. In addition, a decrement in performance was noted at luminance differences of less than 0.2 log units for green and yellow chromatic discrimination functions, suggesting that horses cannot easily discriminate yellow and green from grey. However, the chromatic discrimination functions for red and blue showed that animals performed very well across the full range of target luminances. These results suggest that horses are at least dichromats.
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Lefebvre, L. (1995). Ecological correlates of social learning: problems and solutions for the comparative method. Behav. Process., 35(1-3), 163–171.
Abstract: Interspecific variation in learning and cognition is often accounted for by adaptive specialization, an ecological framework where variation between species in the environmental problems they face is thought to select for quantitatively and/or qualitatively different abilities. Adaptive specialization theory relies on the comparative method for testing its hypotheses and assumes a naturally selected basis for the predicted differences. This review examines social learning as a specialization to group-living and scramble feeding competition. It points out one important problem with current studies in the area, the lack of quantitative controls for confounding variables that may cause type 1 or 2 error in comparative tests. A linear regression technique is proposed to measure and remove interspecific differences on control tests for which there is no predicted adaptive specialization; as in other areas of comparative biology, the adaptive prediction is then made on the residual deviation from the regression of these confounding variables. Examples are given from research on opportunistic Columbids, the group-living feral pigeon Columbia livia, and the territorial Zenaida dove, Zenaida aurita.
Keywords: Adaptive specialization; Social learning; Comparative method
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Fureix, C., Pagès, M., Bon, R., Lassalle, J. - M., Kuntz, P., & Gonzalez, G. (2009). A preliminary study of the effects of handling type on horses' emotional reactivity and the human-horse relationship. Behav. Process., 82(2), 202–210.
Abstract: Handling is a crucial component of the human-horse relationship. Here, we report data from an experiment conducted to assess and compare the effect of two training methods. Two groups of six Welsh mares were trained during four sessions of 50 min, one handled with traditional exercises (halter leading, grooming/brushing, lifting feet, lunging and pseudo-saddling (using only girth and saddle pad) and the second group with natural horsemanship exercises (desensitization, yielding to body pressure, lunging and free-lunging). Emotional reactivity (ER) and the human-horse relationship (HHR) were assessed both prior to and following handling. A social isolation test, a neophobia test and a bridge test were used to assess ER. HHR was assessed through test of spontaneous approach to, and forced approach by, an unknown human. Horses' ER decreased after both types of handling as indicated by decreases in the occurrence of whinnying during stressful situations. Head movement (jerk/shake) was the most sensitive variable to handling type. In the spontaneous approach tests, horses in the traditional handling group showed higher latencies to approach a motionless person after handling than did the natural horsemanship group. Our study suggests that natural horsemanship exercises could be more efficient than traditional exercises for improving horses' HHR.
Keywords: Emotional reactivity; Handling style; Horse; Human-horse relationship
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