Other Animal Sciences Commons^™

Impact Of Equine Interaction During Psychotherapy On Anxiety And Depression For Residential Treatment Program Patients Experiencing Substance Withdrawal, Molly M. Friend, Molly C. Nicodemus, Clay Cavinder, Caleb Lemley, Pauline Prince, Katherine A. Cagle-Holtcamp, Rebecca M. Swanson

People and Animals: The International Journal of Research and Practice

As incidences of substance use disorders (SUD) increase in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need for more effective treatment approaches. Further, treatment approaches currently available struggle to retain patients during the period of substance withdrawal in early treatment due to patients’ withdrawal symptoms including increased feelings of anxiety and depression. Withdrawal symptoms have been linked to dysregulated cortisol concentrations present in this period. Psychotherapy incorporating equine interaction (PIE) has emerged in other populations as a treatment that decreases cortisol concentrations and improves treatment retention. The present study investigated the impact of 4 weeks of PIE on …

Of Dogs And Bonds, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In four of Charles Darwin’s classic works (Darwin, 1859, 1868, 1871, 1872), the domestic dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris)¹ featured prominently, offering key examples to illustrate his ideas about evolution, domestication, comparative behavior and cognition, and emotional expression. Darwin held a clear fondness for dogs, and when replying to letters detailing the “sagacity” of dogs, he remarked “I can believe almost anything about them” (Darwin, 2014). Despite the early interest in their behavior and cognition by a number of leading scientists, dogs were rarely subject to serious investigation as a study species for 150 years. …

Investigating Social Preferences In A High Fission-Fusion Society Of Black And White Ruffed Lemur (Varecia Variegata), Patricia A. Adamo

Theses and Dissertations

Wild lemur primates were tested for social preferences across behaviors. Study found highly conservative social preferences that were very consistent across all behavioral states, despite high fission fusion traits common of lemur groups. This finding lays the foundation for using nearest-neighbor as a proxy of social preference for future endeavors.

Emotional Support Animals For College Students: Do The Benefits Outweigh The Costs?, Sidney Street

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Mental health problems have been drastically increasing in recent years among college students. Alongside the rising prevalence of psychological distress, universities have also experienced an increase in requests to have Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) live on campus. To date however, data are scarce on students’ experiences living with and around ESAs. The present study aims to investigate attitudes and perceptions about ESAs, in both owners of ESAs as well as students who do not own an ESA but have interacted with one. Specifically, owners were interviewed to find whether the perceived benefits of owning an ESA outweigh the associated costs …

Developmental Influences On The Initial Subjective Rewarding Effects Of Etoh, Madison Waldron

Master’s Theses

The present studies were aimed to better understand developmental contributions to the risk for disordered drinking, and facilitate the long-term goal of developing effective interventions for individuals at high risk for alcohol use disorders. Experiment 1 assessed the effect of adolescent pre-exposure to ethanol on adult place preference, as well as, sex- and beta-endorphin(bE)-related contributions. Adolescent C57BL/6J and bE deficient mice were injected with 1.5g/kg of ethanol or saline and put back into their home cages. At the time of adulthood, we employed a single-exposure conditioned place preference paradigm (SE-CPP) to investigate the impact of preexposure on the initial subjective …

Variation In Personality Among Semi-Wild Myanmar Timber Elephants, Sateesh Venkatesh

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines two personality traits: exploration and neophobia, which could influence human-elephant conflicts. Thirty-one semi-wild elephants were tested over two trials using a custom novel puzzle tube containing three tasks and three rewards. Our studies show that elephants do vary significantly between individuals in both exploration and neophobia.

The Fear Of Reptiles And How To Change It, Maxwell Lyman

Honors Projects

Reptile fear is prominent across many cultures. Anti-reptilian attitudes can lead to anti-conservation attitudes towards reptiles. Person-animal interaction has been shown to decrease fear desensitization and increase positive attitudes towards "unpopular" animals. My project demonstrates the effectiveness of live animal presentation in dispelling negative attitudes of reptiles. However, due to the sample size of the project, further research is highly suggested.

Brain Complexity, Sentience And Welfare, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Neither sentience nor moral standing is confined to animals with large or human-like brains. Invertebrates deserve moral consideration. Definition of terms clarifies the relationship between sentience and welfare. All animals have welfare but humans give more protection to sentient animals. Humans should be less human-centred.

Using Object-Choice Tasks To Investigate Sensory Perception In Sunda Pangolins (Manis Javanica), Joshua Dipaola

Theses and Dissertations

Pangolins are one of the most heavily poached, yet least understood mammals in the world. In this study, we used an object-choice task to assess the ecological relevance and use of sensory information in Sunda pangolin foraging behavior. This is the first controlled experiment on pangolin behavior to our knowledge.

The Role Of Dopamine In Decision Making Processes In Drosophila Melanogaster, Michelle C. Bowers

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Understanding the neural processes that mediate decision making is a relatively new field of investigation in the scientific community. With the ultimate goal of understanding how humans decide between one path and another, simpler models such as Drosophila Melanogaster, the common fruit fly, are often utilized as a way of determining the neural circuits involved in these decision-making processes. One of the most important decisions flies make is the decision of where to lay their eggs (oviposit). Choosing the proper substrate upon which to lay eggs is a crucial decision that can ultimately impact their fecundity. This paper investigates the …

Social Referencing In The Domestic Horse, Anne Schrimpf, Marie-Sophie Single, Christian Nawroth

Recognition Collection

Dogs and cats use human emotional information directed to an unfamiliar situation to guide their behavior, known as social referencing. It is not clear whether other domestic species show similar socio-cognitive abilities in interacting with humans. We investigated whether horses (n = 46) use human emotional information to adjust their behavior to a novel object and whether the behavior of horses differed depending on breed type. Horses were randomly assigned to one of two groups: an experimenter positioned in the middle of a test arena directed gaze and voice towards the novel object with either (a) a positive or (b) …

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 …

Behavioural Risks In Female Dogs With Minimal Lifetime Exposure To Gonadal Hormones, Melissa J. Starling, Anne Fawcett, Bethany Wilson, James Serpell, Paul Mcgreevy

Physiology Collection

Spaying of female dogs is a widespread practice, performed primarily for population control. While the consequences of early spaying for health are still being debated, the consequences for behaviour are believed to be negligible. The current study focused on the reported behaviour of 8981 female dogs spayed before 520 weeks (ten years) of life for reasons other than behavioural management, and calculated their percentage lifetime exposure to gonadal hormones (PLGH) as a proportion of their age at the time of being reported to the online Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ). We found that 23 behaviours differed between entire …

The Question Of Animal Awareness, Francoise Wemelsfelder

Françoise Wemelsfelder, PhD

The problem of animal awareness lies at the interface of science and philosophy. As a starting point for the study of phenomena such as awareness, mind, consciousness, etc., we hardly have any reference other than our own human experience and in the context of a nondualistic ontology this can be justified. In philosophy and psychology it appears to be very difficult to give direct operational definitions of terms such as consciousness, etc. So we might expect this to be even more difficult in the study of animals. A detailed knowledge of animals and their behaviour is necessary in order to …

Animal Boredom: Is A Scientific Study Of The Subjective Experiences Of Animals Possible?, Françoise Wemelsfelder

Françoise Wemelsfelder, PhD

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between different meta-scientific frameworks and the science of animal welfare. Animal Boredom 117 During the past few years, I have become more and more convinced that the great difficulty science has in studying subjective experience in its objects, might be related to the denial of any role to subjective experience in the observer as an interpretational guide. Can a quality in the world around us be observed, when this same quality is deliberately excluded from the process of observing?

As a practical example for the discussion described above, the phenomenon …

Impact Of Stress, Fear And Anxiety On The Nociceptive Responses Of Larval Zebrafish, Javier Lopez-Luna, Qussay Al-Jubouri, Lynne U. Sneddon

Lynne Sneddon, PhD

Both adult and larval zebrafish have been demonstrated to show behavioural responses to noxious stimulation but also to potentially stress- and fear or anxiety- eliciting situations. The pain or nociceptive response can be altered and modulated by these situations in adult fish through a mechanism called stress-induced analgesia. However, this phenomenon has not been described in larval fish yet. Therefore, this study explores the behavioural changes in larval zebrafish after noxious stimulation and exposure to challenges that can trigger a stress, fear or anxiety reaction. Five-day post fertilization zebrafish were exposed to either a stressor (air emersion), a predatory fear …

Do Painful Sensations And Fear Exist In Fish?, Lynne U. Sneddon

Lynne Sneddon, PhD

The detection of pain and fear in fi sh has been subject to much debate and, since fi sh are a popular experimental model and commercially important in both angling and aquaculture, many procedures that fi sh are subjected to cause injury, fear and stress. These injuries would give rise to the sensation of pain in humans but whether fi sh have the capacity for pain is relatively under explored. Recent evidence has shown that fi sh have the same neural apparatus to detect pain that mammals and humans do, that their brain is active during a potentially painful experience, …

Geographic Variation In Alarm Calls Of Gunnison's Prairie Dogs, C. N. Slobodchikoff, S. H. Ackers, M. Van Ert

Con Slobodchikoff, PhD

Geographic variation in alarm calls of Gunnison's prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni) was analyzed at regional and local scales. Alarm calls in response to a common stimulus (the same human) were recorded at four colonies near Flagstaff, Arizona, and at six sites throughout the southwestern United States. The acoustic structure of calls was analyzed for seven call variables. Regional differences fit the prediction of greater differences with increased geographical separation. Differences between colonies at a local scale were not related to geographical distance, suggesting that local dialects exist within a region. Differences in the level of predation by humans …

Thinking Chickens: A Review Of Cognition, Emotion, And Behavior In The Domestic Chicken, Lori Marino

Lori Marino, PhD

Domestic chickens are members of an order, Aves, which has been the focus of a revolution in our understanding of neuroanatomical, cognitive, and social complexity. At least some birds are now known to be on par with many mammals in terms of their level of intelligence, emotional sophistication, and social interaction. Yet, views of chickens have largely remained unrevised by this new evidence. In this paper, I examine the peer-reviewed scientific data on the leading edge of cognition, emotions, personality, and sociality in chickens, exploring such areas as self-awareness, cognitive bias, social learning and self-control, and comparing their abilities in …

Laterality Strength Is Linked To Stress Reactivity In Port Jackson Sharks (Heterodontus Portusjacksoni), Evan E. Byrnes, Catarina Vila Pouca, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

Cerebral lateralization is an evolutionarily deep-rooted trait, ubiquitous among the vertebrates and present even in some invertebrates. Despite the advantages of cerebral lateralization in enhancing cognition and facilitating greater social cohesion, large within population laterality variation exists in many animal species. It is proposed that this variation is maintained due links with inter-individual personality trait differences. Here we explored for lateralization in Port Jackson sharks (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) using T-maze turn and rotational swimming tasks. Additionally, we explored for a link between personality traits, boldness and stress reactivity, and cerebral lateralization. Sharks demonstrated large individual and sex biased laterality …

Stress Profile Influences Learning Approach In A Marine Fish, Vincent Raoult, Larissa Trompf, Jane E. Williamson, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

The spatial learning skills of high and low stress juvenile mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicus) were tested in a dichotomous choice apparatus. Groups of fish were formed based on background blood cortisol levels and required to learn the location of a food reward hidden in one of two compartments. Low stress fish characterised by low background levels of the stress hormone cortisol had higher activity levels and entered both rewarded and unrewarded rooms frequently. Within the first week of exposure, however, their preference for the rewarded room increased, indicative of learning. Fish that had high background levels of cortisol, in …

Incubation Under Climatewarming Affects Behavioral Lateralisation In Port Jackson Sharks, Catarina Vila Pouca, Connor Gervais, Joshua Reed, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

Climate change is warming the world’s oceans at an unprecedented rate. Under predicted end-of-century temperatures, many teleosts show impaired development and altered critical behaviors, including behavioral lateralisation. Since laterality is an expression of brain functional asymmetries, changes in the strength and direction of lateralisation suggest that rapid climate warming might impact brain development and function. However, despite the implications for cognitive functions, the potential effects of elevated temperature in lateralisation of elasmobranch fishes are unknown. We incubated and reared Port Jackson sharks at current and projected end-of-century temperatures and measured preferential detour responses to left or right. Sharks incubated at …

Demographics Regarding Belief In Non-Human Animal Sentience And Emotional Empathy With Animals: A Pilot Study Among Attendees Of An Animal Welfare Symposium, Amelia Cornish, Bethany Wilson, David Raubenheimer, Paul Mcgreevy

Paul McGreevy, PhD

Attitudes to animals are linked to beliefs about their ability to experience pain and suffering, their cognition, and their sentience. Education and awareness-raising play a pivotal role in increasing society’s consideration of non-human animal welfare. The current pilot study explores the attitudes towards animal welfare among a unique population of people who attended an animal welfare symposium at the University of Sydney. It involved administration of a validated questionnaire that assessed attitudes to animals; specifically exploring participants’ (n = 41) beliefs about the sentience of animals and their emotional empathy with animals. The resultant data revealed significant associations between participants’ …

Orca Behavior And Subsequent Aggression Associated With Oceanarium Confinement, Robert Anderson, Robyn Waayers, Andrew Knight

Andrew Knight, PhD

Based on neuroanatomical indices such as brain size and encephalization quotient, orcas are among the most intelligent animals on Earth. They display a range of complex behaviors indicative of social intelligence, but these are difficult to study in the open ocean where protective laws may apply, or in captivity, where access is constrained for commercial and safety reasons. From 1979 to 1980, however, we were able to interact with juvenile orcas in an unstructured way at San Diego’s SeaWorld facility. We observed in the animals what appeared to be pranks, tests of trust, limited use of tactical deception, emotional self-control, …

Elevated Sensitivity To Tactile Stimuli In Stereotypic Horses, Sabrina Briefer Freymond, Déborah Bardou, Sandrine Beuret, Iris Bachmann, Klaus Zuberbühler, Elodie Briefer

Elodie Briefer, PhD

Although stereotypic behaviors are a common problem in captive animals, why certain individuals are more prone to develop them remains elusive. In horses, individuals show considerable differences in how they perceive and react to external events, suggesting that this may partially account for the emergence of stereotypies in this species. In this study, we focused on crib-biting, the most common stereotypy displayed by horses. We compared how established crib-biters (“CB” = 19) and normal controls (“C” = 18) differed in response to a standard “personality” assessment test battery, i.e., reactivity to humans, tactile sensitivity, social reactivity, locomotor activity, and curiosity …

Perceptual Lateralization Of Vocal Stimuli In Goats, Luigi Baciadonna, Christian Nawroth, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott

Elodie Briefer, PhD

Functional asymmetries, for example, the preferential involvement of 1 brain hemisphere to process stimuli, may increase brain efficiency and the capacity to carry out tasks simultaneously. We investigated which hemisphere was primarily involved in processing acoustic stimuli in goats using a head-orienting paradigm. Three playbacks using goat vocalizations recorded in different contexts: food anticipation (positive), isolation (negative), food frustration (negative), as well as 1 playback involving dog barks (negative) were presented on the left and right sides of the test subjects simultaneously. The head-orienting response (left or right) and latency to resume feeding were recorded. The direction of the head-orienting …

Perceptual Lateralization Of Vocal Stimuli In Goats, Luigi Baciadonna, Christian Nawroth, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott

Christian Nawroth, PhD

Functional asymmetries, for example, the preferential involvement of 1 brain hemisphere to process stimuli, may increase brain efficiency and the capacity to carry out tasks simultaneously. We investigated which hemisphere was primarily involved in processing acoustic stimuli in goats using a head-orienting paradigm. Three playbacks using goat vocalizations recorded in different contexts: food anticipation (positive), isolation (negative), food frustration (negative), as well as 1 playback involving dog barks (negative) were presented on the left and right sides of the test subjects simultaneously. The head-orienting response (left or right) and latency to resume feeding were recorded. The direction of the head-orienting …

Perceptual Lateralization Of Vocal Stimuli In Goats, Luigi Baciadonna, Christian Nawroth, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott

Alan G. McElligott, PhD

Functional asymmetries, for example, the preferential involvement of 1 brain hemisphere to process stimuli, may increase brain efficiency and the capacity to carry out tasks simultaneously. We investigated which hemisphere was primarily involved in processing acoustic stimuli in goats using a head-orienting paradigm. Three playbacks using goat vocalizations recorded in different contexts: food anticipation (positive), isolation (negative), food frustration (negative), as well as 1 playback involving dog barks (negative) were presented on the left and right sides of the test subjects simultaneously. The head-orienting response (left or right) and latency to resume feeding were recorded. The direction of the head-orienting …

Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus) Vocal Responses To Sonar And Spectrally Pink Background Noise, Maria Zapetis

Dissertations

As human populations rise, the level of man-made noise increases globally. Naval sonar and boat traffic are underwater sound sources of particular concern to marine mammal welfare. To better understand the impact of these noise increases on cetaceans, studies can explore animals’ behavioral changes in response to noise. Studies have investigated the ‘dose-response’ relationship between the received sound pressure level of sonar signals and the behavior of cetaceans in the wild, but exposure studies in controlled environments are limited. The studies in this dissertation examined bottlenose dolphin vocal modifications during various experimental noise treatments. Acoustic recordings previously obtained for bottlenose …

Vocal Expression Of Emotions In Mammals: Mechanisms Of Production And Evidence, Elodie Briefer

Elodie Briefer, PhD

Emotions play a crucial role in an animal’s life because they facilitate responses to external or internal events of significance for the organism. In social species, one of the main functions of emotional expression is to regulate social interactions. There has recently been a surge of interest in animal emotions in several disciplines, ranging from neuroscience to evolutionary zoology. Because measurements of subjective emotional experiences are not possible in animals, researchers use neurophysiological, behavioural and cognitive indicators. However, good indicators, particularly of positive emotions, are still lacking. Vocalizations are linked to the inner state of the caller. The emotional state …