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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Sequential Analysis Of Livestock Herding Dog And Sheep Interactions, Jonathan Early, Jessica Alders, Elizabeth R. Arnott, Claire M. Wade, Paul Mcgreevy Feb 2020

Sequential Analysis Of Livestock Herding Dog And Sheep Interactions, Jonathan Early, Jessica Alders, Elizabeth R. Arnott, Claire M. Wade, Paul Mcgreevy

Interactive Behavior Collection

Livestock herding dogs are crucial contributors to Australian agriculture. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies of the behavioural interactions between dog and livestock during herding. A statistical approach that may reveal cause and effect in such interactions is lag sequential analysis. Using 48 video recordings of livestock herding dogs and sheep in a yard trial competition, event-based (time between behaviours is irrelevant) and time-based (time between behaviours is defined) lag sequential analyses identified several significant behavioural interactions (adjusted residuals greater than 2.58; the maximum likelihood-ratio chi-squared statistic for all eight contingency tables identified all sequences as highly significant …


Musical Dogs: A Review Of The Influence Of Auditory Enrichment On Canine Health And Behavior, Abigail Lindig, Paul Mcgreevy, Angela Crean Jan 2020

Musical Dogs: A Review Of The Influence Of Auditory Enrichment On Canine Health And Behavior, Abigail Lindig, Paul Mcgreevy, Angela Crean

Stress Collection

Music therapy yields many positive health outcomes in humans, but the effects of music on the health and welfare of nonhuman animals vary greatly with the type of music played, the ethology of the species, and the personality and learning history of individual animals. One context in which music therapy may be used to enhance animal welfare is to alleviate stress in domestic environments. Here, we review studies of the effects of music exposure on dogs as a case study for the implementation of music therapy in veterinary medicine. Nine reports of experimental testing for the therapeutic effects of music …


Reduction In Activity By Noxious Chemical Stimulation Is Ameliorated By Immersion In Analgesic Drugs In Zebrafish, Javier Lopez-Luna, Qussay Al-Jubouri, Waleed Al-Nuaimy, Lynne U. Sneddon Apr 2017

Reduction In Activity By Noxious Chemical Stimulation Is Ameliorated By Immersion In Analgesic Drugs In Zebrafish, Javier Lopez-Luna, Qussay Al-Jubouri, Waleed Al-Nuaimy, Lynne U. Sneddon

Anesthesia and Analgesia Collection

Research has recently demonstrated that larval zebrafish show similar molecular responses to nociception to those of adults. Our study explored whether unprotected larval zebrafish exhibited altered behaviour after exposure to noxious chemicals and screened a range of analgesic drugs to determine their efficacy to reduce these responses. This approach aimed to validate larval zebrafish as a reliable replacement for adults as well as providing a high-throughput means of analysing behavioural responses. Zebrafish at 5 days postfertilization were exposed to known noxious stimuli: acetic acid (0.01%, 0.1% and 0.25%) and citric acid (0.1%, 1% and 5%). The behavioural response of each …


The Emotional Brain Of Fish, Sonia Rey Planellas Jan 2017

The Emotional Brain Of Fish, Sonia Rey Planellas

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) analyzes structural homologies and functional equivalences between the brains of mammals and fish to understand where sentience and social cognition might reside in teleosts. He compares neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and behavioural correlates. I discuss current advances in the study of fish cognitive abilities and emotions, and advocate an evolutionary approach to the underlying basis of sentience in teleosts.


Brain Processes For “Good” And “Bad” Feelings: How Far Back In Evolution?, Jaak Panksepp Jan 2016

Brain Processes For “Good” And “Bad” Feelings: How Far Back In Evolution?, Jaak Panksepp

Animal Sentience

The question of whether fish can experience pain or any other feelings can only be resolved by neurobiologically targeted experiments. This commentary summarizes why this is essential for resolving scientific debates about consciousness in other animals, and offers specific experiments that need to be done: (i) those that evaluate the rewarding and punishing effects of specific brain regions and systems (for instance, with deep-brain stimulation); (ii) those that evaluate the capacity of animals to regulate their affective states; and (iii) those that have direct implications for human affective feelings, with specific predictions — for instance, the development of new treatments …


Comparative Evolutionary Approach To Pain Perception In Fishes, Culum Brown Jan 2016

Comparative Evolutionary Approach To Pain Perception In Fishes, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

Arguments against the fact that fish feel pain repeatedly appear even in the face of growing evidence that they do. The standards used to judge pain perception keep moving as the hurdles are repeatedly cleared by novel research findings. There is undoubtedly a vested commercial interest in proving that fish do not feel pain, so the topic has a half-life well past its due date. Key (2016) reiterates previous perspectives on this topic characterised by a black-or-white view that is based on the proposed role of the human cortex in pain perception. I argue that this is incongruent with our …


Fish Brains And Behaviour Indicate Capacity For Feeling Pain, Donald M. Broom Jan 2016

Fish Brains And Behaviour Indicate Capacity For Feeling Pain, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Abstract: Studies of behaviour are of major importance in understanding human pain and pain in other animals such as fish. Almost all of the characteristics of the mammalian pain system are also described for fish. Emotions, feelings and learning from these are controlled in the fish brain in areas anatomically different but functionally very similar to those in mammals. The evidence of pain and fear system function in fish is so similar to that in humans and other mammals that it is logical to conclude that fish feel fear and pain. Fish are sentient beings.


Pain In Fish: Weighing The Evidence, James D. Rose Jan 2016

Pain In Fish: Weighing The Evidence, James D. Rose

Animal Sentience

The target article by Key (2016) examines whether fish have brain structures capable of mediating pain perception and consciousness, functions known to depend on the neocortex in humans. He concludes, as others have concluded (Rose 2002, 2007; Rose et al. 2014), that such functions are impossible for fish brains. This conclusion has been met with hypothetical assertions by others to the effect that functions of pain and consciousness may well be possible through unknown alternate neural processes. Key's argument would be bolstered by consideration of other neurological as well as behavioral evidence, which shows that sharks and ray are fishes …


Physiological And Behavioural Responses To Noxious Stimuli In The Atlantic Cod (Gadus Morhua), Jared R. Eckroth, Øyvind Aas-Hansen, Lynne U. Sneddon, Helena Bichão, Kjell B. Døving Jun 2014

Physiological And Behavioural Responses To Noxious Stimuli In The Atlantic Cod (Gadus Morhua), Jared R. Eckroth, Øyvind Aas-Hansen, Lynne U. Sneddon, Helena Bichão, Kjell B. Døving

Aquaculture Collection

In the present study, our aim was to compare physiological and behavioural responses to different noxious stimuli to those of a standardized innocuous stimulus, to possibly identify aversive responses indicative of injury detection in a commercially important marine teleost fish, the Atlantic cod. Individual fish were administered with a noxious stimulus to the lip under short-term general anaesthesia (MS-222). The noxious treatments included injection of 0.1% or 2% acetic acid, 0.005% or 0.1% capsaicin, or piercing the lip with a commercial fishing hook. Counts of opercular beat rate (OBR) at 10, 30, 60, 90 and 120 min and observations of …


Holding Back The Genes: Limitations Of Research Into Canine Behavioural Genetics, Diane Van Rooy, Elizabeth R. Arnott, Jonathan B. Early, Paul Mcgreevy, Claire M. Wade Jun 2014

Holding Back The Genes: Limitations Of Research Into Canine Behavioural Genetics, Diane Van Rooy, Elizabeth R. Arnott, Jonathan B. Early, Paul Mcgreevy, Claire M. Wade

Genetics Collection

Canine behaviours that are both desirable and undesirable to owners have a demonstrable genetic component. Some behaviours are breed-specific, such as the livestock guarding by maremmas and flank sucking seen in Dobermanns. While the identification of genes responsible for common canine diseases is rapidly advancing, those genes underlying behaviours remain elusive. The challenges of accurately defining and measuring behavioural phenotypes remain an obstacle, and the use of variable phenotyping methods has prevented meta-analysis of behavioural studies. International standardised testing protocols and terminology in canine behavioural evaluations should facilitate selection against behavioural disorders in the modern dog and optimise breeding success …


Nursing Females Are More Prone To Heat Stress: Demography Matters When Managing Flying-Foxes For Climate Change, Stephanie T. Snoyman, Jasmina Munich, Culum Brown Dec 2012

Nursing Females Are More Prone To Heat Stress: Demography Matters When Managing Flying-Foxes For Climate Change, Stephanie T. Snoyman, Jasmina Munich, Culum Brown

Ecological Impacts of Climate Change Collection

Determining the underlying mechanisms responsible for species-specific responses to climate change is important from a species management perspective. The grey-headed flying-fox, Pteropus poliocephalus, is listed as vulnerable but it also a significant pest species for orchardists and thereby presents an interesting management conundrum. Over the last century, the abundance of the grey-headed flying-fox, P. poliocephalus, in Australia has decreased due to a variety of threatening processes but has increased in abundance in urban areas. These flying-foxes are highly susceptible to extreme heat events which are predicted to increase in the future under climate change scenarios. Exceptionally hot days result in …


Microclimate Preferences Of The Grey-Headed Flying Fox (Pteropus Poliocephalus) In The Sydney Region, Stephanie T. Snoyman, Culum Brown Jan 2011

Microclimate Preferences Of The Grey-Headed Flying Fox (Pteropus Poliocephalus) In The Sydney Region, Stephanie T. Snoyman, Culum Brown

Sentience Collection

The population size of the grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) has decreased dramatically as a result of a variety of threatening processes. This species spends a great proportion of time in roosting large social aggregations in urban areas, causing conflict between wildlife and humans. Little is known about why these bats choose to roost in some locations in preference to others. Roost selection by cave-dwelling bats can be greatly influenced by microclimatic variables; however, far less is known about microclimate selection in tree-roosting species despite the direct management implications. This study aimed to determine the microclimate characteristics of P. poliocephalus …


Vigilance And Antipredator Responses Of Caribbean Reef Squid, Jennifer A. Mather Jan 2010

Vigilance And Antipredator Responses Of Caribbean Reef Squid, Jennifer A. Mather

Sentience Collection

Antipredator responses, especially those of open-ocean squid, have been seldom studied in the natural environment. Sepioteuthis sepioidea, observed by snorkellers near the shore in early morning/late afternoon, produced an average of eight moves of over 1m per hour, apparently mostly antipredator behaviours. Close approaches by herbivorous parrotfish elicited no response in 74% of encounters; otherwise, squid produced agonistic zebra stripes or startle-mantle-dots skin patterns. Predatory bar jack fish caused flight but not zebra displays, and squid usually paled and fled quickly (66%) from snapper. The speed of approach was the best predictor for flight and display responses to snapper, …


Laterality Enhances Cognition In Australian Parrots, Maria Magat, Culum Brown Dec 2009

Laterality Enhances Cognition In Australian Parrots, Maria Magat, Culum Brown

Sentience Collection

Cerebral lateralization refers to the division of information processing in either hemisphere of the brain and is a ubiquitous trait among vertebrates and invertebrates. Given its widespread occurrence, it is likely that cerebral lateralization confers a fitness advantage. It has been hypothesized that this advantage takes the form of enhanced cognitive function, potentially via a dual processing mechanism whereby each hemisphere can be used to process specific types of information without contralateral interference. Here, we examined the influence of lateralization on problem solving by Australian parrots. The first task, a pebble-seed discrimination test, was designed for small parrot species that …


Agonistic Behaviour And Biogenic Amines In Shore Crabs Carcinus Maenas, Lynne U. Sneddon, Alan C. Taylor, Felicity A. Huntingford, David G. Watson Feb 2000

Agonistic Behaviour And Biogenic Amines In Shore Crabs Carcinus Maenas, Lynne U. Sneddon, Alan C. Taylor, Felicity A. Huntingford, David G. Watson

Sentience Collection

To investigate the role of certain neurohormones in agonistic behaviour, fights were staged between pairs of size-matched male shore crabs Carcinus maenas, and blood samples were taken immediately after the contests had been resolved. Samples were also taken from these crabs at rest (before and after fighting) and after walking on a treadmill. A control group of crabs also had samples taken on each experimental day. Concentrations of tyramine, dopamine, octopamine, serotonin (5-HT) and norepinephrine were determined in each blood sample using a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) system. Norepinephrine was not detectable in any of the samples, but the standards …