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Author Malavasi, R.; Huber, L. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Evidence of heterospecific referential communication from domestic horses (Equus caballus) to humans Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 19 Issue 5 Pages 899-909  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Referential communication occurs when a sender elaborates its gestures to direct the attention of a recipient to its role in pursuit of the desired goal, e.g. by pointing or showing an object, thereby informing the recipient what it wants. If the gesture is successful, the sender and the recipient focus their attention simultaneously on a third entity, the target. Here we investigated the ability of domestic horses (Equus caballus) to communicate referentially with a human observer about the location of a desired target, a bucket of food out of reach. In order to test six operational criteria of referential communication, we manipulated the recipient’s (experimenter) attentional state in four experimental conditions: frontally oriented, backward oriented, walking away from the arena and frontally oriented with other helpers present in the arena. The rate of gaze alternation was higher in the frontally oriented condition than in all the others. The horses appeared to use both indicative (pointing) and non-indicative (nods and shakes) head gestures in the relevant test conditions. Horses also elaborated their communication by switching from a visual to a tactile signal and demonstrated perseverance in their communication. The results of the tests revealed that horses used referential gestures to manipulate the attention of a human recipient so to obtain an unreachable resource. These are the first such findings in an ungulate species.  
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  ISSN 1435-9456 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Malavasi2016 Serial 6029  
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Author Taubert, J.; Weldon, K.B.; Parr, L.A. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Robust representations of individual faces in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) but not monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume Issue Pages 1-9  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Being able to recognize the faces of our friends and family members no matter where we see them represents a substantial challenge for the visual system because the retinal image of a face can be degraded by both changes in the person (age, expression, pose, hairstyle, etc.) and changes in the viewing conditions (direction and degree of illumination). Yet most of us are able to recognize familiar people effortlessly. A popular theory for how face recognition is achieved has argued that the brain stabilizes facial appearance by building average representations that enhance diagnostic features that reliably vary between people while diluting features that vary between instances of the same person. This explains why people find it easier to recognize average images of people, created by averaging multiple images of the same person together, than single instances (i.e. photographs). Although this theory is gathering momentum in the psychological and computer sciences, there is no evidence of whether this mechanism represents a unique specialization for individual recognition in humans. Here we tested two species, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), to determine whether average images of different familiar individuals were easier to discriminate than photographs of familiar individuals. Using a two-alternative forced-choice, match-to-sample procedure, we report a behaviour response profile that suggests chimpanzees encode the faces of conspecifics differently than rhesus monkeys and in a manner similar to humans.  
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  ISSN 1435-9456 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Taubert2016 Serial 6030  
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Author Ringhofer, M.; Yamamoto, S. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Domestic horses send signals to humans when they face with an unsolvable task Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume Issue Pages 1-9  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Some domestic animals are thought to be skilled at social communication with humans due to the process of domestication. Horses, being in close relationship with humans, similar to dogs, might be skilled at communication with humans. Previous studies have indicated that they are sensitive to bodily signals and the attentional state of humans; however, there are few studies that investigate communication with humans and responses to the knowledge state of humans. Our first question was whether and how horses send signals to their potentially helpful but ignorant caretakers in a problem-solving situation where a food item was hidden in a bucket that was accessible only to the caretakers. We then examined whether horses alter their behaviours on the basis of the caretakers’ knowledge of where the food was hidden. We found that horses communicated to their caretakers using visual and tactile signals. The signalling behaviour of the horses significantly increased in conditions where the caretakers had not seen the hiding of the food. These results suggest that horses alter their communicative behaviour towards humans in accordance with humans’ knowledge state.  
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  ISSN 1435-9456 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Ringhofer2016 Serial 6037  
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Author Sommer, V.; Lowe, A.; Dietrich, T. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Not eating like a pig: European wild boar wash their food Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 19 Issue 1 Pages 245-249  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Carrying food to water and either dunking or manipulating it before consumption has been observed in various taxa including birds, racoons and primates. Some animals seem to be simply moistening their food. However, true washing aims to remove unpleasant surface substrates such as grit and sand and requires a distinction between items that do and do not need cleaning as well as deliberate transportation of food to a water source. We provide the first evidence for food washing in suids, based on an incidental observation with follow-up experiments on European wild boar (Sus scrofa) kept at Basel Zoo, Switzerland. Here, all adult pigs and some juveniles of a newly formed group carried apple halves soiled with sand to the edge of a creek running through their enclosure where they put the fruits in the water and pushed them to and fro with their snouts before eating. Clean apple halves were never washed. This indicates that pigs can discriminate between soiled and unsoiled foods and that they are able to delay gratification for long enough to transport and wash the items. However, we were unable to ascertain to which degree individual and/or social learning brought this behaviour about.  
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  ISSN 1435-9456 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Sommer2016 Serial 6132  
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Author Cinková, I.; Policht, R. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Sex and species recognition by wild male southern white rhinoceros using contact pant calls Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 19 Issue 2 Pages 375-386  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Recognition of information from acoustic signals is crucial in many animals, and individuals are under selection pressure to discriminate between the signals of conspecifics and heterospecifics or males and females. Here, we first report that rhinos use information encoded in their calls to assess conspecifics and individuals of closely related species. The southern (Ceratotherium simum) and critically endangered northern (C. cottoni) white rhinos are the most social out of all the rhinoceros species and use a contact call pant. We found that southern white rhino pant calls provide reliable information about the caller’s sex, age class and social situation. Playback experiments on wild territorial southern white rhinoceros males revealed that they responded more strongly to the pant calls of conspecific females compared to the calls of other territorial males. This suggests that pant calls are more important form of communication between males and females than between territorial males. Territorial southern males also discriminated between female and territorial male calls of northern species and reacted more intensively to the calls of northern than southern males. This might be caused by a novelty effect since both species naturally live in allopatry. We conclude that white rhinos can directly benefit from assessing individuals at long distances using vocal cues especially because their eyesight is poor. Pant calls thus likely play a significant role in their social relationships and spatial organization. In addition, better understanding of vocal communication in white rhinos might be helpful in conservation management particularly because of their low reproduction in captivity.  
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  ISSN 1435-9456 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Cinková2016 Serial 6144  
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Author Ward, A; Webster, M. openurl 
  Title Sociality: The Behaviour of Group-Living Animals Type Book Whole
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Abbreviated Journal  
  Volume Issue Pages  
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  Abstract Covers the aspects of social behaviour of animals in comprehensive form Provides a clear overview to up-to-date empirical and theoretical research on social animal behaviour

Discusses collective animal behaviour, social networks and animal personality in detail

The last decade has seen a surge of interest among biologists in a range of social animal phenomena, including collective behaviour and social networks. In ‘Animal Social Behaviour’, authors Ashley Ward and Michael Webster integrate the most up-to-date empirical and theoretical research to provide a new synthesis of the field, which is aimed at fellow researchers and postgraduate students on the topic. ​
 
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  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6156  
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Author Koistinen, T.; Korhonen, H.T.; Hämäläinen, E.; Mononen, J. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Blue foxes' (Vulpes lagopus) motivation to gain access and interact with various resources Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Applied Animal Behaviour Science Abbreviated Journal Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci.  
  Volume 176 Issue Pages 105-111  
  Keywords Cage; Enrichment; Fur farming; Latency  
  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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  ISSN 0168-1591 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6166  
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Author A. Lanata; A. Guidi; G. Valenza; P. Baragli; E. P. Scilingo doi  openurl
  Title Quantitative heartbeat coupling measures in human-horse interaction Type Conference Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) Abbreviated Journal 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (E  
  Volume Issue Pages 2696-2699  
  Keywords electrocardiography; medical signal processing; signal classification; time series; Dtw; Hrv; Mpc; Msc; complex biological systems; dynamic time warping; grooming; heart rate variability time series; heartbeat dynamics; human-horse dynamic interaction; magnitude squared coherence; magnitude-phase coupling; mean phase coherence; nearest mean classifier; quantitative heartbeat coupling; real human-animal interaction; time duration; visual-olfactory interaction; Coherence; Couplings; Electrocardiography; Heart rate variability; Horses; Protocols; Time series analysis  
  Abstract Abstract— We present a study focused on a quantitative estimation of a human-horse dynamic interaction. A set of measures based on magnitude and phase coupling between heartbeat dynamics of both humans and horses in three different conditions is reported: no interaction, visual/olfactory interaction and grooming. Specifically, Magnitude Squared Coherence (MSC), Mean Phase Coherence (MPC) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) have been used as estimators of the amount of coupling between human and horse through the analysis of their heart rate variability (HRV) time series in a group of eleven human subjects, and one horse. The rationale behind this study is that the interaction of two complex biological systems go towards a coupling process whose dynamical evolution is modulated by the kind and time duration of the interaction itself. We achieved a congruent and consistent

statistical significant difference for all of the three indices. Moreover, a Nearest Mean Classifier was able to recognize the three classes of interaction with an accuracy greater than 70%. Although preliminary, these encouraging results allow a discrimination of three distinct phases in a real human-animal interaction opening to the characterization of the empirically proven relationship between human and horse.
 
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  Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (E  
  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1557-170x ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6175  
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Author Smolla, M.; Alem, S.; Chittka, L.; Shultz, S. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Copy-when-uncertain: bumblebees rely on social information when rewards are highly variable Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Biology letters Abbreviated Journal Biol. Lett.  
  Volume 12 Issue 6 Pages  
  Keywords  
  Abstract To understand the relative benefits of social and personal information use in foraging decisions, we developed an agent-based model of social learning that predicts social information should be more adaptive where resources are highly variable and personal information where resources vary little. We tested our predictions with bumblebees and found that foragers relied more on social information when resources were variable than when they were not. We then investigated whether socially salient cues are used preferentially over non-social ones in variable environments. Although bees clearly used social cues in highly variable environments, under the same conditions they did not use non-social cues. These results suggest that bumblebees use a 'copy-when-uncertain' strategy.  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6198  
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Author Bailey, D url  openurl
  Title Dominance Hierarchies in Horses: Comparing and Contrasting Different Methods for Assessing Hierarchies Type Journal Article
  Year (down) 2016 Publication Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado Abbreviated Journal  
  Volume 5 Issue 3 Pages  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Understanding animal social structures is imperative when it comes to the care, housing and handling of large herd animals. Knowing how hierarchies are structured, along with environmental and physiological aspects that may affect them, will allow owners and breeders to house and care for their animals. The aim of my study was to better understand two methods used to assess dominance hierarchies in horses, Equus caballus, and to predict which method would be more useful for owners housing domestic horses. I designed an experiment where I compared a structured method, the paired feeding test, with behavioral observations from the horses’ natural setting. I hypothesized that the structured method would not conclude the same dominance hierarchy as the natural observations. I also hypothesized that traits of the horses, such as size or age, would correlate with the hierarchy ranking within a herd. A herd of six individual horses from a small ranch east of Platteville, Colorado was used to test the two methods. I found that the two methods measured different hierarchies. The paired feeding test showed no correlations to any of the physical measurements, as well as did not provide a hierarchy that was similar to the natural dominance observations of the horses. Natural observations established a more linear hierarchy and had significant correlations with weight and overall body size. The results indicate that the paired feeding test may not be a valid method for establishing dominance hierarchies within domestic horses housed in a small range.

I recommend use of natural observations over paired feeding tests for ranchers, breeders or owners trying to understand the dominance hierarchies among their herds.
 
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6204  
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