Abstract: Observation of behaviour, especially social behaviour, and experimental studies of learning and brain function give us information about the complexity of concepts that animals have. In order to learn to obtain a resource or carry out an action, domestic animals may: relate stimuli such as human words to the reward, perform sequences of actions including navigation or detours, discriminate amongst other individuals, copy the actions of other individuals, distinguish between individuals who do or do not have information, or communicate so as to cause humans or other animals to carry out actions. Some parrots, that are accustomed to humans but not domesticated, can use words to have specific meanings. In some cases, stimuli, individuals or actions are remembered for days, weeks or years. Events likely to occur in the future may be predicted and changes over time taken into account. Scientific evidence for the needs of animals depends, in part, on studies assessing motivational strength whose methodology depends on the cognitive ability of the animals. Recognition and learning may be associated with changes in physiology, behaviour and positive or negative feelings. Learning and other complex behaviour can result in affect and affect can alter cognition. The demonstration of cognitive bias gives indications about affect and welfare but should be interpreted in the light of other information. All of the information mentioned so far helps to provide evidence about sentience and the level of awareness. The term sentience implies a range of abilities, not just the capacity to have some feelings. The reluctance of scientists to attribute complex abilities and feelings to non-humans has slowed the development of this area of science. Most people consider that they have obligations to some animals. However, they might protect animals because they consider that an animal has an intrinsic value, or because of their concern for its welfare. In social species, there has been selection promoting moral systems that might result in behaviours such as attempts to avoid harm to others, collaboration and other altruistic behaviour. An evaluation of such behaviour may provide one of the criteria for decisions about whether or not to protect animals of a particular species. Other criteria may be: whether or not the animal is known as an individual, similarity to humans, level of awareness, extent of feelings, being large, being rare, being useful or having aesthetic quality for humans. Cognitive ability should also be considered when designing methods of enriching the environments of captive animals.

Abstract: Recent studies raise serious welfare concerns regarding the estimated 93.6 million horses, donkeys and mules in developing countries. Most equids are used for work in poor communities, and are commonly afflicted with wounds, poor body condition, respiratory diseases, parasites, dental problems, and lameness. Non-physical welfare problems, such as fear of humans, are also of concern. Interventions to improve working equine welfare aim to prioritise the conditions that cause the most severe impositions on the animals' subjectively experienced welfare, but data identifying which conditions these may be, are lacking. Here we describe a stage in the validation of behavioural welfare indicators that form part of a working equine welfare assessment protocol. Over 4 years, behavioural and physical data were collected from 5481 donkeys, 4504 horses, and 858 mules across nine developing countries. Behaviours included the animals' general alertness, and their responses to four human-interaction tests, using the unfamiliar observer as the human stimulus. Avoidance behaviours correlated significantly with each other across the human-interaction tests, with 21% of animals avoiding the observer, but they showed no associations with likely anthropogenic injuries. Over 13% of equids appeared [`]apathetic': lethargic rather than alert. Measures of unresponsiveness correlated with each other across the five tests, and were associated with poor body condition, abnormal mucous membrane colour, faecal soiling, eye abnormalities, more severe wounds, and older age, depending on the equine species. This suggests that working equids in poor physical health show an unresponsive behavioural profile, consistent with sickness behaviour, exhaustion, chronic pain, or depression-like states.

Abstract: Gregarious animals living in permanent social groups experience intra-group competition. Conflicts over resources can escalate into costly aggression and, in some conditions, non-dispersive forms of conflict resolution may be favoured. Post-conflict friendly reunions, hence reconciliation, have been described in a variety of species. The aim of this study was to explore, for the first time, the occurrence of reconciliation in a group of domestic horses (Equus caballus) and learn more about strategies used to maintain group cohesion. The behaviour of seven horses living as permanent group in an enclosure for at least 2 years was observed by video for 108 h from June to August 2007. We used a Post-Conflict/Matched Control method to assess the existence of reconciliation and third-party affiliation. Behaviours recorded Post-Conflict, or during Matched Control periods, were classified as affiliative based on previous descriptions of visual communication patterns in horses. The proportion of attracted pairs over total post-conflict situations was significantly greater than the proportion of dispersed pairs, both during dyadic interactions (p < 0.001) and during triadic interactions (p = 0.002). The results of the present study show that both dyadic reconciliation and third-party post-conflict affiliative interactions form important social mechanisms for managing post-conflict situations in horses.

Abstract: Consensus decisions about the nature and timing of group activities allow animals to maintain group cohesiveness, but also entail costs because individuals often differ with respect to their optimal activity budgets. Two mechanisms whereby animals reach a consensus include ‘consistent leadership’, in which a single dominant individual makes the decision, and ‘variable leadership’ in which several group members contribute to the decision outcome. Sharing of consensus decisions is expected to reduce consensus costs to most group members. Both patterns are thought to emerge from the complexity of social relationships of group members. We investigated the distribution of leadership during group departures in two packs of free-ranging dogs, Canis lupus familiaris, and tested how its distribution between individuals was affected by dominance rank-related affiliative and agonistic relationships. Although leadership was not entirely concentrated on a single group member, both packs had a limited number of habitual leaders. In the largest pack, the pattern of leadership changed from ‘variable’ to nearly ‘consistent’ after its size had shrunk. Habitual leaders were usually old and high-ranking individuals. However, high-ranking dogs that received affiliative submissions in greeting ceremonies were more likely to lead than dominant dogs receiving submissions only in agonistic contexts. During resting times, habitual followers associated more closely with habitual leaders than with other followers. These results suggest that in social species collective movements may arise from the effort of subordinates to maintain close proximity with specific valuable social partners.

Abstract: Abstract Facial flushing, a colour change caused by variation of blood flow through highly vascularized skin, has been observed in taxonomically diverse bird species but the function of the behaviour has not been assessed. Lappet-faced vultures, Aegypius tracheliotos, have unfeathered heads that can rapidly flush from pink to dark red, and this has been hypothesized to indicate contest ability in vulture gatherings. We show that adults with flushed heads won most interactions against those with pale heads. A previously unnoticed colour variation of the throat, visible only when the head is flushed, was also related to the outcome of interactions: blue-throated adults participated in, and won, more interactions than red-throated adults. We suggest that the non-fixed groups of which lappet-faced vulture populations consist promote the evolution of signals of dominance that can be adjusted extremely rapidly.