Animal Studies Commons^™

How To Help When It Hurts? Think Systemic, Corey L. Wrenn

Corey Lee Wrenn, Ph.D.

Impact Of Teat Order On Feed Consumption In Swine From Birth To Nursery, Callan Lichtenwalter

Animal Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

A relationship between teat order and feed consumption has been assumed in pigs, but no study has looked at this exact relationship. Pigs were observed shortly after birth to be in either a cranial, middle, or caudal teat positon. Growth performance data and active and total plasma ghrelin concentrations were analyzed at birth, weaning, and at the end of the nursery stage of production to see if a relationship with teat order was present. Further growth performance data were analyzed during different phases of the nursery stage. Overall, no effect of teat order was found on average daily gain, average ...

Effects Of Environmental Enrichment On Behavior In A Domestic Goat Herd, Stephanie Peramas

Senior Honors Projects

Animal welfare is one of the most important parts of animal management. Apart from other measures of good animal welfare, like being in good health, animal behavior can be indicative of the animal’s internal state and is often one of the first signs of improper welfare. Stereotypies, or stereotypic behavior, are commonly viewed as a symptom of improper animal welfare. Unenriched, or barren, environments associated with farmed livestock have long been associated with inducing stereotypic behavior. The addition of precise enrichment to the animals’ environment is a common remedy for stereotypic behavior. With respect to stereotypic goat behavior, few ...

The Vaginal Microbiome Related To Reproductive Traits In Beef Heifers, Maryanna Wells Mcclure

Theses and Dissertations

The greatest impact on profitability of a commercial beef operation is reproduction. In the human vaginal microbiome, dominance by Lactobacillus is a sign of reproductive health and fitness. In other species (non-human primates and ewes), Lactobacillus is found in low amounts and dominators of these microbial communities are considered to be pathogenic in humans. In beef heifers, little is known about the vaginal and fecal microbiota with respect to their relationship with fertility. To this end, we followed heifers through gestation to examine the dynamics of vaginal and fecal microbial composition throughout pregnancy.

Heifers were exposed to an estrus synchronization ...

Towards Quantifying Relevant Land Cover Change: A Case Study In The Central Flyway Of The Monarch Butterfly, Hanna Lenee Ford

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past 20 years notable decreases in monarch butterfly populations have led researchers to begin evaluating the landscape for changes and seeking out opportunities for enacting conservation programs to better support their survival. The monarch butterfly has recently come under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act which has created a need for a more informed view of the landscape through which the migrate and breed, the central United States. In this research three spatially-explicit models are explored using the most applicable datasets currently available to address pressing policy and land manager decisions regarding monarch butterfly and pollinator ...

Keeping And Killing: Six Conversations On The Complex Nature Of The Human-Animal Relationship, Shannen Cashman

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the complexity of animal-human relationships in the contemporary United States, drawing on literature, science, and philosophy to explore the various ways that humans keep animals in captivity, such as in the instances of pet-keeping, animal research, and animal agriculture, while also having to kill them. By examining these ways of interacting with animals, an inherent duality within human consciousness is exposed. Humans both do and do not want to take responsibility for their actions regarding animals, often times resulting in humans telling themselves stories that make them feel more comfortable with these conflicting desires. The final chapter ...

Behavioural Flexibility In Bumblebees (Bombus Impatiens), Caroline Strang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Foraging bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) extract nectar and pollen from a wide variety of morphologically distinct flower species, referred to as flower handling. Bumblebees learn this behaviour and acquisition of multiple flower handling techniques is a demonstration of behavioural flexibility. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how bumblebees are able to forage flexibly. This research has three specific goals: (1) to identify the cognitive mechanisms that support flower handling learning, (2) to understand how bumblebees avoid interference costs between multiple handling techniques, and (3) to explore the relation between behavioural flexibility and the mushroom bodies of the bumblebee brain ...

Furs: Functionality, Fashion, And Franchise, Jenna Q. Detweiler

Environmental Studies Honors Papers

Animal furs have been used in various manners through human history. Early humans cut crude shawls for warmth, and with the development of tools such as needles, closer-fitting clothing such as fur pants became possible. As time went on, products such as wool and cotton were used for clothing and, with fur alternatives, furs were reserved for the ultra-wealthy in some cultures. The image of fur as a luxury item has remained ever since, but simultaneously fur has become more accessible to the general public. Meanwhile, animal rights movements have successfully dampened interest in fur in some countries and communities ...

The Effects Of Equine-Assisted Interventions On Children With Autism: A Systematic Review, Jenna Starke

Carroll College Student Undergraduate Research Festival

Objective: This systematic review was conducted to determine the effects of equine-assisted interventions (EAI) on children aged 3 to 16 years of age with autism in order to further increase knowledge about EAI as an intervention for children with autism.

Methods: Articles were screened on PubMed and CINAHL databases for relationships between equine-assisted interventions and effects on autistic behavior or autistic severity in children with autism.

Results: Studies showed that children receiving EAI improved in social functioning, social skills, motor skills, attention and focus, empathizing, irritability, maladaptive behavior, motivation, executive functioning, quality of life, length of gait cycle, mood and ...

Fuzz Fix: The Physiological Effects Of Both Human And Canine Interactions On A College Campus, Bridget Bloesch, Skyler Howard, Marie Suthers Dvm

Carroll College Student Undergraduate Research Festival

The implementation of Animal Assisted Activities (AAA’s) on college campuses during finals week has grown in popularity in recent years. The belief is that AAA’s help reduce student stress levels during a week of difficult exams. However, there is limited research on the effects of these programs on both the students and the dogs. This study looked at the effects that interaction with a dog prior to taking a test had on student’s heart rate and blood pressure. Participants in the experimental group had their heart rate and blood pressure measured before and after interacting with a ...

Role Of Human Personalities In Horse Handling, Lauren Castillo

Carroll College Student Undergraduate Research Festival

How do people with different personalities interact with horses? The researchers designed this study to determine if introverts have an easier time handling an unfamiliar horse when compared to extroverts. Volunteers with little to no horse experience completed the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator. The researcher assigned a horse at random to volunteers to lead over a 12-foot platform in an indoor arena. All horses were familiar with this obstacle. The researcher videotaped every participant. The dependent variables included the fluid motion of the horse, horse facial expressions, and horse body language along with horse-human interactions. The hypothesis is that ...

The Purpose Of Animals According To Mark And Athanasius, Caroline Herzog

Carroll College Student Undergraduate Research Festival

Religion affects how groups of people view animals, and these views can vary between writers within the same religion. Both the author of the Gospel of Mark and the author of “The Incarnation of the Word of God” present animals as subordinate to humans, revealing hierarchies within the cultures of their original audiences. The Gospel of Mark offers a more inclusive view of animals than “The Incarnation of the Word of God” by inferring that the purpose of animals is for human use and to reveal God, whereas Athanasius believes their purpose is solely to offer a foil to the ...

Explaining China’S Wildlife Crisis: Cultural Tradition Or Politics Of Development, Peter J. Li

Peter J. Li, Ph.D.

This chapter is about China’s wildlife crisis. As the following sections attempt to demonstrate, abuse of and assault on wildlife in captivity and in the wild have reached an unprecedented level on the Chinese mainland in the reform era (1978–present). Shocking brutality against wildlife animals has been frequently exposed by Chinese and international media. To readers outside East Asia, they ask if the Chinese are culturally indifferent to animal suffering. Indeed, does the Chinese culture sanction cruelty to animals? Or is it the contemporary politics of economic development that is more directly responsible for the crisis?

Characterization Of Swine Production Using Measurements Collected Via Indoor Positioning System, Shaun Perisho

Dissertations

Legislative and market initiatives are requiring that gestating sows move from individual housing to group settings. Little information is known about coping styles of individual sows in these more socially complex environments and thus the impact of different behavioral strategies on sow reproductive success and efficiency was investigated. The movements of 70 sows during periods of reintroduction into large pen gestational housing following insemination was measured with a commercially available system that tracked animal location and accelerations. Principle component analysis (PCA) was used to establish composite variables characterizing each animal’s behavioral response to social reintroduction and revealed the presence ...

Identifying The Social Contexts Present For Mouthing Behaviors In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Erin E. Frick

Dissertations

Much of the research on dolphin communication has focused on the acoustic signals produced in a variety of social contexts. Although acoustic signals are undoubtedly an important aspect of dolphin communication systems, dolphin communication is multifaceted and multimodal (e.g., postural, visual and tactile signals, acoustic cues). The present study examined behaviors that involve the mouth (i.e., mouthing behaviors) in a group of captive dolphins using 2,696 minutes of underwater acoustic and video recordings collected from 2010 – 2014. Target behaviors are described as primarily visual (e.g., open-mouth display), both visual and acoustic (e.g., jaw claps), and ...

Role Of Human Personalities In Horse Handling, Lauren Castillo

Anthrozoology Undergraduate Theses

How do people with different personalities interact with horses? This study was designed to determine if introverts have an easier time handling an unfamiliar horse when compared to extroverts. Volunteers with a range of horse experience were asked to complete the Myers Briggs Personality Assessment. Volunteers were assigned a horse to lead over a 12-foot platform in an outdoor arena. All horses were familiar with this obstacle. Every participant was videotaped. The dependent variables included the fluid motion of the horse, horse facial expressions, and horse body language along with horsehuman interactions. The hypothesis was that introverts would experience an ...

Critical Animal And Media Studies: Expanding The Understanding Of Oppression In Communication Research, Nuria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman

Carrie P. Freeman

Contextual Fear Learning And Memory In Alternative Stress Coping Styles, Matthew R. Baker, Ryan Y. Wong

Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Animals frequently must overcome stressors, and the ability to encode and recall these salient experiences is essential to an individual’s survival. Across many taxa, studies have documented two alternative stress coping styles (proactive and reactive) that differ in behavior, cognition, stress physiology, and underlying neuromolecular mechanisms. The role of stress in cognitive traits (e.g. learning and memory) has been well documented, however, the influence of an animal’s stress coping style on learning and memory capabilities is only beginning to be understood. Here, we developed a contextual fear learning paradigm to characterize learning and memory differences between proactive ...

Eating Animals: The Influence Of Food-Based Narratives, Gillian Spolarich, Amanda Ruth-Mcswain, Lisa K. Lundy

Journal of Applied Communications

This study examines the prevalence and persuasiveness of popular food-based narratives. Specifically, the book Eating Animals, a detailed critique of the U.S. meat industry, provided the foundation for exploring the influence of food-based narratives. Guided by the theory of narrative persuasion, a qualitative research design was employed to investigate the influence of this contemporary text on reader perceptions and behaviors. The present study incorporated in-depth interviews with individuals that read all or some of the acclaimed food-based narrative Eating Animals. Findings indicate that the popular narrative motivated a range of attitudinal and behavioral changes. Additional themes that emerged relate ...

Personality In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus) And Harbor Seals (Phoca Vitulina): Methodological Convergence And Species-Specific Emotional Repertoires., Amber De Vere

Dissertations

Despite the wide acceptance of animal personality as a valid area of study, research on marine mammal personality remains remarkably scarce. What literature does exist predominantly focuses on bottlenose dolphins (Frick, 2016; Highfill & Kuczaj, 2007; Kuczaj, Highfill & Byerly, 2012; Lilley, de Vere, Yeatre & Kuczaj, 2018; Moreno, Highfill & Kuczaj, 2017). There is also strong evidence for individual differences in grey seals (Robinson et al., 2015; Twiss & Franklin, 2010; Twiss, Culloch & Pomeroy, 2011; Twiss, Cairns, Culloch, Richards & Pomeroy, 2012), and preliminary research has provided evidence of broad personality factors in pinniped species using behavioral coding (de Vere, Lilley & Highfill, 2017) and trait rating methods (Ciardelli, Weiss, Powell & Reiss, 2017). Several aspects of personality are not well documented across many taxa, including age-related patterns, the species-relevance of emotional trait words, potential issues associated with the non-human Dominance factor, and the convergent validity of multiple methods. The current study therefore aimed to address these issues in two pinniped species, California sea lions and harbor seals, and provides the first cross-method validation of personality dimensions in these taxa. There was some evidence that pinniped trainers could reliably rate the emotional states experienced by these species. Trait rating assessments produced three personality factors for each species; these exhibited good cross-method convergence in California sea lions, but not harbor seals. Dominance rankings were correlated with one behavioral and one rating factor in each species, although this was somewhat confounded by the extremely close correspondence of dominance and age.