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Boissy, A. (1995). Fear and Fearfulness in Animals. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 70(2), 165–191.
Abstract: Persistence of individual differences in animal behavior in reactions to various environmental challenges could reflect basic divergences in temperament, which might be used to predict details of adaptive response. Although studies have been carried out on fear and anxiety in various species, including laboratory, domestic and wild animals, no consistent definition of fearfulness as a basic trait of temperament has emerged. After a classification of the events that may produce a state of fear, this article describes the great variability in behavior and in physiological patterns generally associated with emotional reactivity. The difficulties of proposing fearfulness-the general capacity to react to a variety of potentially threatening situations-as a valid basic internal variable are then discussed. Although there are many studies showing covariation among the psychobiological responses to different environmental challenges, other studies find no such correlations and raise doubts about the interpretation of fearfulness as a basic personality trait. After a critical assessment of methodologies used in fear and anxiety studies, it is suggested that discrepancies among results are mainly due to the modulation of emotional responses in animals, which depend on numerous genetic and epigenetic factors. It is difficult to compare results obtained by different methods from animals reared under various conditions and with different genetic origins. The concept of fearfulness as an inner trait is best supported by two kinds of investigations. First, an experimental approach combining ethology and experimental psychology produces undeniable indicators of emotional reactivity. Second, genetic lines selected for psychobiological traits prove useful in establishing between behavioral and neuroendocrine aspects of emotional reactivity. It is suggested that fearfulness could be considered a basic feature of the temperament of each individual, one that predisposes it to respond similarly to a variety of potentially alarming challenges, but is nevertheless continually modulated during development by the interaction of genetic traits of reactivity with environmental factors, particularly in the juvenile period. Such interaction may explain much of the interindividual variability observed in adaptive responses.
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Mech, L. D. (1970). The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species. New York: The Natural History Press, Garden City.
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Burke, C., Rashman, M., Wich, S., Symons, A., Theron, C., & Longmore, S. (2019). Optimizing observing strategies for monitoring animals using drone-mounted thermal infrared cameras. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 40(2), 439–467.
Abstract: ABSTRACTThe proliferation of relatively affordable off-the-shelf drones offers great opportunities for wildlife monitoring and conservation. Similarly the recent reduction in the cost of thermal infrared cameras also offers new promise in this field, as they have the advantage over conventional RGB cameras of being able to distinguish animals based on their body heat and being able to detect animals at night. However, the use of drone-mounted thermal infrared cameras comes with several technical challenges. In this article, we address some of these issues, namely thermal contrast problems due to heat from the ground, absorption and emission of thermal infrared radiation by the atmosphere, obscuration by vegetation, and optimizing the flying height of drones for a best balance between covering a large area and being able to accurately image and identify animals of interest. We demonstrate the application of these methods with a case study using field data and make the first ever detection of the critically endangered riverine rabbit (Bunolagus monticularis) in thermal infrared data. We provide a web-tool so that the community can easily apply these techniques to other studies (http://www.astro.ljmu.ac.uk/aricburk/uav_calc/).
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Dunbar, R. I. M. (2009). The social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution. Annals of Human Biology, 36(5), 562–572.
Abstract: The social brain hypothesis was proposed as an explanation for the fact that primates have unusually large brains for body size compared to all other vertebrates: Primates evolved large brains to manage their unusually complex social systems. Although this proposal has been generalized to all vertebrate taxa as an explanation for brain evolution, recent analyses suggest that the social brain hypothesis takes a very different form in other mammals and birds than it does in anthropoid primates. In primates, there is a quantitative relationship between brain size and social group size (group size is a monotonic function of brain size), presumably because the cognitive demands of sociality place a constraint on the number of individuals that can be maintained in a coherent group. In other mammals and birds, the relationship is a qualitative one: Large brains are associated with categorical differences in mating system, with species that have pairbonded mating systems having the largest brains. It seems that anthropoid primates may have generalized the bonding processes that characterize monogamous pairbonds to other non-reproductive relationships (?friendships?), thereby giving rise to the quantitative relationship between group size and brain size that we find in this taxon. This raises issues about why bonded relationships are cognitively so demanding (and, indeed, raises questions about what a bonded relationship actually is), and when and why primates undertook this change in social style.
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Meriggi, A., Dagradi, V., Dondina, O., Perversi, M., Milanesi, P., Lombardini, M., et al. (2014). Short-term responses of wolf feeding habits to changes of wild and domestic ungulate abundance in Northern Italy. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 27(4), 389–411.
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Kruska, D. (1988). Mammalian domestication and its effect on brain structure and behavior. In H. J. Jerison, & I. Jerison (Eds.), Intelligence and Evolutionary Biology. New York: Springer-Verlag.
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Ruid, D. B., Paul, W. J., Roell, B. J., Wydeven, A. P., Willging, R. C., Jurewicz, R. L., et al. (2009). Wolf-Human Conflicts and Management in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In A. P. Wydeven, T. R. Van Deelen, & E. J. Heske (Eds.), Recovery of Gray Wolves in the Great Lakes Region of the United States: An Endangered Species Success Story (pp. 279–295). New York, NY: Springer New York.
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de Jong, T. R., & Neumann, I. D. (2018). Oxytocin and Aggression. In R. Hurlemann, & V. Grinevich (Eds.), Behavioral Pharmacology of Neuropeptides: Oxytocin (pp. 175–192). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Abstract: The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has a solid reputation as a facilitator of social interactions such as parental and pair bonding, trust, and empathy. The many results supporting a pro-social role of OT have generated the hypothesis that impairments in the endogenous OT system may lead to antisocial behavior, most notably social withdrawal or pathological aggression. If this is indeed the case, administration of exogenous OT could be the “serenic” treatment that psychiatrists have for decades been searching for.
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Irving-Pease, E. K., Ryan, H., Jamieson, A., Dimopoulos, E. A., Larson, G., & Frantz, L. A. F. (2019). Paleogenomics of Animal Domestication. In C. Lindqvist, & O. P. Rajora (Eds.), Paleogenomics: Genome-Scale Analysis of Ancient DNA (pp. 225–272). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Abstract: Starting with dogs, over 15,000 years ago, the domestication of animals has been central in the development of modern societies. Because of its importance for a range of disciplines – including archaeology, biology and the humanities – domestication has been studied extensively. This chapter reviews how the field of paleogenomics has revolutionised, and will continue to revolutionise, our understanding of animal domestication. We discuss how the recovery of ancient DNA from archaeological remains is allowing researchers to overcome inherent shortcomings arising from the analysis of modern DNA alone. In particular, we show how DNA, extracted from ancient substrates, has proven to be a crucial source of information to reconstruct the geographic and temporal origin of domestic species. We also discuss how ancient DNA is being used by geneticists and archaeologists to directly observe evolutionary changes linked to artificial and natural selection to generate a richer understanding of this fascinating process.
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Adelman, M., & Knijnik, J. (2013). Gender and Equestrian Sport. Dordrecht: Springer.
Abstract: This volume brings together studies from various disciplines of the social sciences and humanities (Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Studies, History and Literary theory) that examine the equestrian world as a historically gendered and highly dynamic field of contemporary sport and culture. From elite international dressage and jumping, polo and the turf, to the rodeo world of the Americas and popular forms of equestrian sport and culture, we are introduced to a range of issues as they unfold at local and global, national and international levels. Students and scholars of gender, culture and sport will find much of interest in this original look at contemporary issues such as “engendered” (women’s and men’s) dentities/subjectivities of equestrians, representations of girls, horses and the world of adventure in juvenile fiction; the current “feminization” of particular equestrian activities (and where boys and men stand in relation to this); how broad forms of social inequality and stratification play themselves out within gendered equestrian contexts; men and women and their relation to horses within the framework of current discussions on the relation of animals to humans (which may include not only love and care, but also exploitation and violence), among others. Singular contributions that incorporate a wide variety of classic and contemporary theoretical perspectives and empirical methodologies show how horse cultures around the globe contribute to historical and current constructions of embodied “femininities” and “masculinities”, reflecting a world that has been moving “beyond the binaries” while continuing to be enmeshed in their persistent and contradictory legacy. The final chapter makes a brave attempt at synthesizing individual chapters and moving forward from the evidences they provide, to suggest a compelling agenda for future research.
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