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Author Collins, G.H.; Petersen, S.L.; Carr, C.A.; Pielstick, L.
Title Testing VHF/GPS Collar Design and Safety in the Study of Free-Roaming Horses Type Journal Article
Year 2014 Publication Plos One Abbreviated Journal Plos One
Volume (down) 9 Issue 9 Pages e103189
Keywords
Abstract Effective and safe monitoring techniques are needed by U.S. land managers to understand free-roaming horse behavior and habitat use and to aid in making informed management decisions. Global positioning system (GPS) and very high frequency (VHF) radio collars can be used to provide high spatial and temporal resolution information for detecting free-roaming horse movement. GPS and VHF collars are a common tool used in wildlife management, but have rarely been used for free-roaming horse research and monitoring in the United States. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the design, safety, and detachment device on GPS/VHF collars used to collect free-roaming horse location and movement data. Between 2009 and 2010, 28 domestic and feral horses were marked with commercial and custom designed VHF/GPS collars. Individual horses were evaluated for damage caused by the collar placement, and following initial observations, collar design was modified to reduce the potential for injury. After collar modifications, which included the addition of collar length adjustments to both sides of the collar allowing for better alignment of collar and neck shapes, adding foam padding to the custom collars to replicate the commercial collar foam padding, and repositioning the detachment device to reduce wear along the jowl, we observed little to no evidence of collar wear on horses. Neither custom-built nor commercial collars caused injury to study horses, however, most of the custom-built collars failed to collect data. During the evaluation of collar detachment devices, we had an 89% success rate of collar devices detaching correctly. This study showed that free-roaming horses can be safely marked with GPS and/or VHF collars with minimal risk of injury, and that these collars can be a useful tool for monitoring horses without creating a risk to horse health and wellness.
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
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Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6209
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Author Monfardini, E.; Hadj-Bouziane, F.; Meunier, M.
Title Model-Observer Similarity, Error Modeling and Social Learning in Rhesus Macaques Type Journal Article
Year 2014 Publication Plos One Abbreviated Journal Plos One
Volume (down) 9 Issue 2 Pages e89825
Keywords
Abstract Monkeys readily learn to discriminate between rewarded and unrewarded items or actions by observing their conspecifics. However, they do not systematically learn from humans. Understanding what makes human-to-monkey transmission of knowledge work or fail could help identify mediators and moderators of social learning that operate regardless of language or culture, and transcend inter-species differences. Do monkeys fail to learn when human models show a behavior too dissimilar from the animals' own, or when they show a faultless performance devoid of error? To address this question, six rhesus macaques trained to find which object within a pair concealed a food reward were successively tested with three models: a familiar conspecific, a 'stimulus-enhancing' human actively drawing the animal's attention to one object of the pair without actually performing the task, and a 'monkey-like' human performing the task in the same way as the monkey model did. Reward was manipulated to ensure that all models showed equal proportions of errors and successes. The 'monkey-like' human model improved the animals' subsequent object discrimination learning as much as a conspecific did, whereas the 'stimulus-enhancing' human model tended on the contrary to retard learning. Modeling errors rather than successes optimized learning from the monkey and 'monkey-like' models, while exacerbating the adverse effect of the 'stimulus-enhancing' model. These findings identify error modeling as a moderator of social learning in monkeys that amplifies the models' influence, whether beneficial or detrimental. By contrast, model-observer similarity in behavior emerged as a mediator of social learning, that is, a prerequisite for a model to work in the first place. The latter finding suggests that, as preverbal infants, macaques need to perceive the model as 'like-me' and that, once this condition is fulfilled, any agent can become an effective model.
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
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Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6195
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Author Range, F.; Virányi, Z.
Title Wolves are better imitators of conspecifics than dogs Type Journal Article
Year 2014 Publication PLoS One Abbreviated Journal
Volume (down) 9 Issue Pages
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Abstract Domestication is thought to have influenced the cognitive abilities of dogs underlying their communication with humans, but little is known about its effect on their interactions with conspecifics. Since domestication hypotheses offer limited predictions in regard to wolf-wolf compared to dog-dog interactions, we extend the cooperative breeding hypothesis suggesting that the dependency of wolves on close cooperation with conspecifics, including breeding but also territory defense and hunting, has created selection pressures on motivational and cognitive processes enhancing their propensity to pay close attention to conspecifics’ actions. During domestication, dogs’ dependency on conspecifics has been relaxed, leading to reduced motivational and cognitive abilities to interact with conspecifics. Here we show that 6-month-old wolves outperform same aged dogs in a two-action-imitation task following a conspecific demonstration. While the wolves readily opened the apparatus after a demonstration, the dogs failed to solve the problem. This difference could not be explained by differential motivation, better physical insight of wolves, differential developmental pathways of wolves and dogs or a higher dependency of dogs from humans. Our results are best explained by the hypothesis that higher cooperativeness may come together with a higher propensity to pay close attention to detailed actions of others and offer an alternative perspective to domestication by emphasizing the cooperativeness of wolves as a potential source of dog-human cooperation.
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Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Range2014 Serial 6246
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Author Briefer Freymond, S.; Briefer, E.F.; Niederhäusern, R.V.; Bachmann, I.
Title Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication PLoS ONE Abbreviated Journal PLoS ONE
Volume (down) 8 Issue 1 Pages e54688 EP -
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Abstract <p>Horses are often kept in individual stables, rather than in outdoor groups, despite such housing system fulfilling many of their welfare needs, such as the access to social partners. Keeping domestic stallions in outdoor groups would mimic bachelor bands that are found in the wild. Unfortunately, the high level of aggression that unfamiliar stallions display when they first <italic>encounter each other</italic> discourages owners from keeping them in groups. However, this level of aggression is likely to be particularly important only during group integration, when the dominance hierarchy is being established, whereas relatively low aggression rates have been observed among stable feral bachelor bands. We investigated the possibility of housing breeding stallions owned by the Swiss National Stud in groups on a large pasture (5 stallions in 2009 and 8 stallions in 2010). We studied the pattern of agonistic, ritual and affiliative interactions after group integration (17–23 days), and the factors influencing these interactions (time after group integration, dominance rank, age or experience of group housing). We found that stallions displayed generally more ritual than agonistic and than affiliative interactions. The frequency of agonistic and ritual interactions decreased quickly within the first three to four days. The frequency of affiliative interactions increased slowly with time before decreasing after 9–14 days. A stable hierarchy could be measured after 2–3 months. The highest-ranking males had less ritual interactions than the lowest-ranking. Males had also less agonistic, ritual and affiliative interactions if they had already been housed in a group the previous year. Therefore, we found that breeding stallions could be housed together on a large pasture, because the frequency of agonistic interactions decreased quickly and remained at a minimal level from the fourth day following group integration. This housing system could potentially increase horse welfare and reduce labour associated with horse management.</p>
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
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Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5656
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Author Proops, L.; Rayner, J.; Taylor, A.M.; McComb, K.
Title The Responses of Young Domestic Horses to Human-Given Cues Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication PLoS ONE Abbreviated Journal PLoS ONE
Volume (down) 8 Issue 6 Pages e67000 EP -
Keywords
Abstract <p>It has been suggested that the process of domestication, at least in some species, has led to an innate predisposition to be skilled at reading human communicative and attentional cues. Adult domestic horses (<italic>Equus caballus</italic>) are highly sensitive to subtle bodily cues when determining if a person is attending to them but they are less adept at using human communicative cues in object choice tasks. Here we provide the first study into the ontogeny of such skills in order to gain insights into the mechanisms underlying these abilities. Compared with adult horses, youngsters under the age of three could use body orientation but not more subtle cues such as head movement and open/closed eyes to correctly choose an attentive person to approach for food. Across two object choice experiments, the performance of young horses was comparable to that of adult horses – subjects were able to correctly choose a rewarded bucket using marker placement, pointing and touching cues but could not use body orientation, gaze, elbow pointing or tapping cues. Taken together these results do not support the theory that horses possess an innate predisposition to be particularly skilled at using human cues. Horses' ability to determine whether humans are attending to them using subtle body cues appears to require significant experience to fully develop and their perhaps less remarkable use of limited cues in object choice tasks, although present at a much earlier age, is likely to reflect a more general learning ability related to stimulus enhancement rather than a specific ‘human-reading’ skill.</p>
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
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Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5676
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Author Viry, S.; Sleimen-Malkoun, R.; Temprado, J.-J.; Frances, J.-P.; Berton, E.; Laurent, M.; Nicol, C.
Title Patterns of Horse-Rider Coordination during Endurance Race: A Dynamical System Approach Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication PLoS ONE Abbreviated Journal PLoS ONE
Volume (down) 8 Issue 8 Pages e71804 EP -
Keywords
Abstract <p>In riding, most biomechanical studies have focused on the description of the horse locomotion in unridden condition. In this study, we draw the prospect of how the basic principles established in inter-personal coordination by the theory of <italic>Coordination Dynamics</italic> may provide a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding the horse-rider coupling. The recent development of mobile technologies allows combined horse and rider recordings during long lasting natural events such as endurance races. Six international horse-rider dyads were thus recorded during a 120 km race by using two tri-axial accelerometers placed on the horses and riders, respectively. The analysis concentrated on their combined vertical displacements. The obtained shapes and angles of Lissajous plots together with values of relative phase between horse and rider displacements at lower reversal point allowed us to characterize four coordination patterns, reflecting the use of two riding techniques per horse's gait (trot and canter). The present study shows that the concepts, methods and tools of self-organizing dynamic system approach offer new directions for understanding horse-rider coordination. The identification of the horse-rider coupling patterns constitutes a firm basis to further study the coalition of multiple constraints that determine their emergence and their dynamics in endurance race.</p>
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
Language Summary Language Original Title
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ISSN ISBN Medium
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Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5706
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Author Freidin, E.; Putrino, N.; D’Orazio, M.; Bentosela, M.
Title Dogs’ Eavesdropping from People’s Reactions in Third Party Interactions Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication PLoS ONE Abbreviated Journal PLoS ONE
Volume (down) 8 Issue 11 Pages e79198 EP -
Keywords
Abstract <p>Eavesdropping involves the acquisition of information from third-party interactions, and can serve to indirectly attribute reputation to individuals. There is evidence on eavesdropping in dogs, indicating that they can develop a preference for people based on their cooperativeness towards others. In this study, we tested dogs’ eavesdropping abilities one step further. In a first experiment, dogs could choose between cooperative demonstrators (the donors) who always gave food to an approaching third person (the beggar); here, the only difference between donors was whether they received positive or negative reactions from the beggar (through verbal and gestural means). Results showed that dogs preferentially approached the donor who had received positive reactions from the beggar. By contrast, two different conditions showed that neither the beggar’s body gestures nor the verbal component of the interaction on their own were sufficient to affect the dogs’ preferences. We also ran two further experiments to test for the possibility of dogs’ choices being driven by local enhancement. When the donors switched places before the choice, dogs chose at random. Similarly, in a nonsocial condition in which donors were replaced by platforms, subjects chose at chance levels. We conclude that dogs’ nonrandom choices in the present protocol relied on the simultaneous presence of multiple cues, such as the place where donors stood and several features of the beggar’s behavior (gestural and verbal reactions, and eating behavior). Nonetheless, we did not find conclusive evidence that dogs discriminated the donors by their physical features, which is a prerequisite of reputation attribution.</p>
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
Language Summary Language Original Title
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Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5807
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Author Petersen, J.L.; Mickelson, J.R.; Cothran, E.G.; Andersson, L.S.; Axelsson, J.; Bailey, E.; Bannasch, D.; Binns, M.M.; Borges, A.S.; Brama, P.; da Câmara Machado, A.; Distl, O.; Felicetti, M.; Fox-Clipsham, L.; Graves, K.T.; Guérin, G.; Haase, B.; Hasegawa, T.; Hemmann, K.; Hill, E.W.; Leeb, T.; Lindgren, G.; Lohi, H.; Lopes, M.S.; McGivney, B.A.; Mikko, S.; Orr, N.; Penedo, M.C.T.; Piercy, R.J.; Raekallio, M.; Rieder, S.; Røed, K.H.; Silvestrelli, M.; Swinburne, J.; Tozaki, T.; Vaudin, M.; M. Wade, C.; McCue, M.E.
Title Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication Plos One Abbreviated Journal Plos One
Volume (down) 8 Issue 1 Pages e54997
Keywords
Abstract Horses were domesticated from the Eurasian steppes 5,000-6,000 years ago. Since then, the use of horses for transportation, warfare, and agriculture, as well as selection for desired traits and fitness, has resulted in diverse populations distributed across the world, many of which have become or are in the process of becoming formally organized into closed, breeding populations (breeds). This report describes the use of a genome-wide set of autosomal SNPs and 814 horses from 36 breeds to provide the first detailed description of equine breed diversity. FST calculations, parsimony, and distance analysis demonstrated relationships among the breeds that largely reflect geographic origins and known breed histories. Low levels of population divergence were observed between breeds that are relatively early on in the process of breed development, and between those with high levels of within-breed diversity, whether due to large population size, ongoing outcrossing, or large within-breed phenotypic diversity. Populations with low within-breed diversity included those which have experienced population bottlenecks, have been under intense selective pressure, or are closed populations with long breed histories. These results provide new insights into the relationships among and the diversity within breeds of horses. In addition these results will facilitate future genome-wide association studies and investigations into genomic targets of selection.
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
Language Summary Language Original Title
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Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6214
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Author Pirault, P.; Danvy, S.; Verrier, E.; Leroy, G.
Title Genetic Structure and Gene Flows within Horses: A Genealogical Study at the French Population Scale Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication Plos One Abbreviated Journal Plos One
Volume (down) 8 Issue 4 Pages e61544
Keywords
Abstract Since horse breeds constitute populations submitted to variable and multiple outcrossing events, we analyzed the genetic structure and gene flows considering horses raised in France. We used genealogical data, with a reference population of 547,620 horses born in France between 2002 and 2011, grouped according to 55 breed origins. On average, individuals had 6.3 equivalent generations known. Considering different population levels, fixation index decreased from an overall species FIT of 1.37%, to an average of -0.07% when considering the 55 origins, showing that most horse breeds constitute populations without genetic structure. We illustrate the complexity of gene flows existing among horse breeds, a few populations being closed to foreign influence, most, however, being submitted to various levels of introgression. In particular, Thoroughbred and Arab breeds are largely used as introgression sources, since those two populations explain together 26% of founder origins within the overall horse population. When compared with molecular data, breeds with a small level of coancestry also showed low genetic distance; the gene pool of the breeds was probably impacted by their reproducer exchanges.
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
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Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6215
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Author Sueur, C.; Deneubourg, J.-L.; Petit, O.
Title From Social Network (Centralized vs. Decentralized) to Collective Decision-Making (Unshared vs. Shared Consensus) Type Journal Article
Year 2012 Publication PLoS ONE Abbreviated Journal PLoS ONE
Volume (down) 7 Issue 2 Pages e32566 EP -
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Abstract <p>Relationships we have with our friends, family, or colleagues influence our personal decisions, as well as decisions we make together with others. As in human beings, despotism and egalitarian societies seem to also exist in animals. While studies have shown that social networks constrain many phenomena from amoebae to primates, we still do not know how consensus emerges from the properties of social networks in many biological systems. We created artificial social networks that represent the continuum from centralized to decentralized organization and used an agent-based model to make predictions about the patterns of consensus and collective movements we observed according to the social network. These theoretical results showed that different social networks and especially contrasted ones – star network vs. equal network – led to totally different patterns. Our model showed that, by moving from a centralized network to a decentralized one, the central individual seemed to lose its leadership in the collective movement's decisions. We, therefore, showed a link between the type of social network and the resulting consensus. By comparing our theoretical data with data on five groups of primates, we confirmed that this relationship between social network and consensus also appears to exist in animal societies.</p>
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Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
Language Summary Language Original Title
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Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5712
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