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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Human-Directed Behaviour In Goats Is Not Affected By Short-Term Positive Handling, Jan Langbein, Annika Krause, Christian Nawroth
Human-Directed Behaviour In Goats Is Not Affected By Short-Term Positive Handling, Jan Langbein, Annika Krause, Christian Nawroth
Social Cognition Collection
In addition to domestication, interactions with humans or task-specific training during ontogeny have been proposed to play a key role in explaining differences in human–animal communication across species. In livestock, even short-term positive interactions with caretakers or other reference persons can influence human–animal interaction at different levels and over different periods of time. In this study, we investigated human-directed behaviour in the ‘unsolvable task’ paradigm in two groups of domestic goats (Capra aegagrus hircus). One group was positively handled and habituated to a plastic box by the experimenter to retrieve a food reward, while the other group only received standard …
Goats Prefer Positive Human Emotional Facial Expressions, Christian Nawroth, Natalia Albuquerque, Carine Savalli, Marie-Sophie Single, Alan G. Mcelligott
Goats Prefer Positive Human Emotional Facial Expressions, Christian Nawroth, Natalia Albuquerque, Carine Savalli, Marie-Sophie Single, Alan G. Mcelligott
Social Cognition Collection
Domestication has shaped the physiology and the behaviour of animals to better adapt to human environments. Therefore, human facial expressions may be highly informative for animals domesticated for working closely with people, such as dogs and horses. However, it is not known whether other animals, and particularly those domesticated primarily for production, such as goats, are capable of perceiving human emotional cues. In this study, we investigated whether goats can distinguish human facial expressions when simultaneously shown two images of an unfamiliar human with different emotional valences (positive/ happy or negative/angry). Both images were vertically attached to a wall on …
Human Demonstration Does Not Facilitate The Performance Of Horses (Equus Caballus) In A Spatial Problem-Solving Task, Joan-Bryce Burla, Janina Siegwart, Christian Nawroth
Human Demonstration Does Not Facilitate The Performance Of Horses (Equus Caballus) In A Spatial Problem-Solving Task, Joan-Bryce Burla, Janina Siegwart, Christian Nawroth
Spatial Cognition Collection
Horses’ ability to adapt to new environments and to acquire new information plays an important role in handling and training. Social learning in particular would be very adaptive for horses as it enables them to flexibly adjust to new environments. In the context of horse handling, social learning from humans has been rarely investigated but could help to facilitate management practices. We assessed the impact of human demonstration on the spatial problem-solving abilities of horses during a detour task. In this task, a bucket with a food reward was placed behind a double-detour barrier and 16 horses were allocated to …