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Krueger, K., Marr, I., & Farmer, K. (2017). Equine Cognition. In J. Vonk, & T. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior (pp. 1–11). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
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Collins, G. H., Petersen, S. L., Carr, C. A., & Pielstick, L. (2014). Testing VHF/GPS Collar Design and Safety in the Study of Free-Roaming Horses. Plos One, 9(9), e103189.
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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Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design. qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Los Angeles: Sage.
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Selby, A., & Smith-Osborne, A. (2012). A Systematic Review of Effectiveness of Complementary and Adjunct Therapies and Interventions Involving Equines (Vol. 32).
Abstract: Objective: This systematic review examines the empirical literature in an emerging body of evidence for the effectiveness of biopsychosocial interventions involving equines across populations with chronic illness or health challenges. Method: Selected quantitative studies published in peer-reviewed journals were reviewed for inclusion; the gray literature and white papers were also explored. Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome (PICO) criteria and Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) were applied to all studies. Fourteen full reports meeting a priori inclusion criteria were extracted from 103 studies accessed through 16 electronic databases and a hand search. Data were synthesized in relation to three research questions informing evidence-based practice. Results: No randomized clinical trials were located. Two studies provided a moderate level of evidence for effectiveness. Nine studies demonstrated statistically significant positive effects. Three studies did not find significant psychosocial effects for the target group, although one found significant positive effects for the comparison group. Conclusion: In the aggregate, the evidence is promising in support of the effectiveness of complementary and adjunct interventions employing equines in the treatment of health challenges. Future studies are needed that utilize rigorous and creative designs, especially longitudinal studies and comparisons with established effective treatments.
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Mench, J. A., Morrow-Tesch, J., & Chu, L. - R. (1998). Environmental enrichment for farm animals. Lab Anim., 27, 32–36.
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Leadbeater, E., & Dawson, E. H. (2017). A social insect perspective on the evolution of social learning mechanisms. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 114(30), 7838–7845.
Abstract: The social world offers a wealth of opportunities to learn from others, and across the animal kingdom individuals capitalize on those opportunities. Here, we explore the role of natural selection in shaping the processes that underlie social information use, using a suite of experiments on social insects as case studies. We illustrate how an associative framework can encompass complex, context-specific social learning in the insect world and beyond, and based on the hypothesis that evolution acts to modify the associative process, suggest potential pathways by which social information use could evolve to become more efficient and effective. Social insects are distant relatives of vertebrate social learners, but the research we describe highlights routes by which natural selection could coopt similar cognitive raw material across the animal kingdom.
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Riley, J. L., Noble, D. W. A., Byrne, R. W., & Whiting, M. J. (2017). Does social environment influence learning ability in a family-living lizard? Anim. Cogn., 20(3), 449–458.
Abstract: Early developmental environment can have profound effects on individual physiology, behaviour, and learning. In birds and mammals, social isolation during development is known to negatively affect learning ability; yet in other taxa, like reptiles, the effect of social isolation during development on learning ability is unknown. We investigated how social environment affects learning ability in the family-living tree skink (Egernia striolata). We hypothesized that early social environment shapes cognitive development in skinks and predicted that skinks raised in social isolation would have reduced learning ability compared to skinks raised socially. Offspring were separated at birth into two rearing treatments: (1) raised alone or (2) in a pair. After 1 year, we quantified spatial learning ability of skinks in these rearing treatments (N = 14 solitary, 14 social). We found no effect of rearing treatment on learning ability. The number of skinks to successfully learn the task, the number of trials taken to learn the task, the latency to perform the task, and the number of errors in each trial did not differ between isolated and socially reared skinks. Our results were unexpected, yet the facultative nature of this species' social system may result in a reduced effect of social isolation on behaviour when compared to species with obligate sociality. Overall, our findings do not provide evidence that social environment affects development of spatial learning ability in this family-living lizard.
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Liedtke, J., & Schneider, J. M. (2017). Social makes smart: rearing conditions affect learning and social behaviour in jumping spiders. Anim. Cogn., 20(6), 1093–1106.
Abstract: There is a long-standing debate as to whether social or physical environmental aspects drive the evolution and development of cognitive abilities. Surprisingly few studies make use of developmental plasticity to compare the effects of these two domains during development on behaviour later in life. Here, we present rearing effects on the development of learning abilities and social behaviour in the jumping spider Marpissa muscosa. These spiders are ideally suited for this purpose because they possess the ability to learn and can be reared in groups but also in isolation without added stress. This is a critical but rarely met requirement for experimentally varying the social environment to test its impact on cognition. We split broods of spiders and reared them either in a physically or in a socially enriched environment. A third group kept under completely deprived conditions served as a 'no-enrichment' control. We tested the spiders' learning abilities by using a modified T-maze. Social behaviour was investigated by confronting spiders with their own mirror image. Results show that spiders reared in groups outperform their conspecifics from the control, i.e. 'no-enrichment', group in both tasks. Physical enrichment did not lead to such an increased performance. We therefore tentatively suggest that growing up in contact with conspecifics induces the development of cognitive abilities in this species.
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Whalen, A., Cownden, D., & Laland, K. (2015). The learning of action sequences through social transmission. Anim. Cogn., 18(5), 1093–1103.
Abstract: Previous empirical work on animal social learning has found that many species lack the ability to learn entire action sequences solely through reliance on social information. Conversely, acquiring action sequences through asocial learning can be difficult due to the large number of potential sequences arising from even a small number of base actions. In spite of this, several studies report that some primates use action sequences in the wild. We investigate how social information can be integrated with asocial learning to facilitate the learning of action sequences. We formalize this problem by examining how learners using temporal difference learning, a widely applicable model of reinforcement learning, can combine social cues with their own experiences to acquire action sequences. The learning problem is modeled as a Markov decision process. The learning of nettle processing by mountain gorillas serves as a focal example. Through simulations, we find that the social facilitation of component actions can combine with individual learning to facilitate the acquisition of action sequences. Our analysis illustrates that how even simple forms of social learning, combined with asocial learning, generate substantially faster learning of action sequences compared to asocial processes alone, and that the benefits of social information increase with the length of the action sequence and the number of base actions.
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Kis, A., Huber, L., & Wilkinson, A. (2015). Social learning by imitation in a reptile (Pogona vitticeps). Anim.Cogn., 18(1), 325–331.
Abstract: The ability to learn through imitation is thought to be the basis of cultural transmission and was long considered a distinctive characteristic of humans. There is now evidence that both mammals and birds are capable of imitation. However, nothing is known about these abilities in the third amniotic class--reptiles. Here, we use a bidirectional control procedure to show that a reptile species, the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps), is capable of social learning that cannot be explained by simple mechanisms such as local enhancement or goal emulation. Subjects in the experimental group opened a trap door to the side that had been demonstrated, while subjects in the ghost control group, who observed the door move without the intervention of a conspecific, were unsuccessful. This, together with differences in behaviour between experimental and control groups, provides compelling evidence that reptiles possess cognitive abilities that are comparable to those observed in mammals and birds and suggests that learning by imitation is likely to be based on ancient mechanisms.
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