Animal Structures Commons^™

Field Journal: The Excluded Middle, Carrie E. Kouts

Masters Theses

What does it look like to engage with organisms and landscapes at the periphery of anthropocentric value structures? How does one break the internalized myth that the “built” environment is excluded from the natural world? When does a hyper-mobile and hyper-commodified society confront the exponential crisis of animal death? Within this series of journal entries, field notes, collection observations, weird prose, and sensory musings, one will find questions on the nature of being human and the complex narratives of care we encounter in a world shared with more-than-humans. Each handwritten vignette and photograph from daily life weaves a non-linear and …

Dog Sniffing Biomechanic Responses In An Odor Detection Test Of Odorants With Differing Physical Properties, Lydia Burnett, Nicholas Hebdon, Pete A. Stevens, Monica Moljo, Lindsay D. Waldrop, Lauryn Degreeff

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Dogs are utilized in forensic science for their extensive scent detection capabilities. They are often considered the “gold standard” in field detection for targets such as illicit drugs and explosives. Despite their prevalence in the field, relatively little is known about how dogs interact with and transport volatile organic compounds through their olfactory system. In this study, two groups of dogs were utilized – Sport detection dogs (n=19) that participate in the National Association of Canine Scent Work and have achieved advanced standing through training and successful search competitions and law enforcement explosive detection dogs (n=8) which were included for …

Amphisbaenian Head Movement And Burrowing Forces In Damp Granular Media, Jacob Newell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Damp granular media is a difficult environment to study because it is both practically complex and it lacks equations which fully describe its behavior. In this study, an oscillatory lateral head movement and its effects while penetrating damp granular media were tested using a robophysical model. This experimental research was inspired by the burrowing behavior of the clade Amphisbaenia, a group of usually limbless squamates that employ a variety of different burrowing behaviors, but it can apply to a wide range of burrowers. This research could help with both human burrowing technologies and the further investigation of animal behaviors.

Pilot Testing A Survey To Evaluate Horse Owner And Trainer Perceptions Of The Importance And Ideality Of Equine Hoof Balance, Katherine Gilmore

Animal Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Balance plays an integral role in the healthy equine hoof, yet there is a significant deficiency of research investigating horse owner and trainer knowledge of hoof balance. This study aimed to pilot test an online survey instrument evaluating horse owner and trainer perceptions of proper hoof care and balance. The survey instrument sought to collect demographic information of horse owners and trainers, determine horse owners’ and trainers’ abilities to identify ideally balanced equine forehooves, and assess horse owner and trainer knowledge of best hoof trimming and shoeing practices. Ninety-one horse owners and trainers with facilities that were within a 150-mile …

Medial Edge Chondrification Of The Vocal Folds Of E. Pustulosus And Its Function In Sexual Selection, Helena Soon Czochanski

Pacific Undergraduate Research and Creativity Conference (PURCC)

No abstract provided.

Goats Distinguish Between Positive And Negative Emotion-Linked Vocalisations, Luigi Baciadonna, Elodie Briefer, Livio Favaro, A. G. Mcelligott

Bioacoustics Collection

Background: Evidence from humans suggests that the expression of emotions can regulate social interactions and promote coordination within a group. Despite its evolutionary importance, social communication of emotions in non-human animals is still not well understood. Here, we combine behavioural and physiological measures, to determine if animals can distinguish between vocalisations linked to different emotional valences (positive and negative). Using a playback paradigm, goats were habituated to listen to a conspecific call associated with positive or negative valence (habituation phase) and were subsequently exposed to a variant of the same call type (contact call) associated with the opposite valence (dishabituation …

Bat Detective—Deep Learning Tools For Bat Acoustic Signal Detection, Oisin Mac Aodha, Rory Gibb, Kate E. Barlow, Michael Firman, Robin Freeman, Briana Harder, Libby Kinsey, Gary R. Mead, Stuart E. Newson, Ivan Pandourski, Stuart Parsons, Jon Russ, Abigel Szodoray-Paradi, Elena Tilova, Mark Girolami, Gabriel Brostow, Kate E. Jones

Bioacoustics Collection

Passive acoustic sensing has emerged as a powerful tool for quantifying anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity, especially for echolocating bat species. To better assess bat population trends there is a critical need for accurate, reliable, and open source tools that allow the detection and classification of bat calls in large collections of audio recordings. The majority of existing tools are commercial or have focused on the species classification task, neglecting the important problem of first localizing echolocation calls in audio which is particularly problematic in noisy recordings. We developed a convolutional neural network based open-source pipeline for detecting ultrasonic, full-spectrum, search-phase …

Encoding Of Emotional Valence In Wild Boar (Sus Scrofa) Calls, Anne-Laure Maigrot, Edna Hillmann, Elodie Briefer

Bioacoustics Collection

Measuring emotions in nonhuman mammals is challenging. As animals are not able to verbally report how they feel, we need to find reliable indicators to assess their emotional state. Emotions can be described using two key dimensions: valence (negative or positive) and arousal (bodily activation or excitation). In this study, we investigated vocal expression of emotional valence in wild boars (Sus scrofa). The animals were observed in three naturally occurring situations: anticipation of a food reward (positive), affiliative interactions (positive), and agonistic interactions (negative). Body movement was used as an indicator of emotional arousal to control for the effect of …

Perception Of Emotional Valence In Horse Whinnies, Elodie Briefer, Roi Mandel, Anne-Laure Maigrot, Sabrina Briefer Freymond, Iris Bachmann, Edna Hillmann

Bioacoustics Collection

Background: Non-human animals often produce different types of vocalisations in negative and positive contexts (i.e. different valence), similar to humans, in which crying is associated with negative emotions and laughter is associated with positive ones. However, some types of vocalisations (e.g. contact calls, human speech) can be produced in both negative and positive contexts, and changes in valence are only accompanied by slight structural differences. Although such acoustically graded signals associated with opposite valence have been highlighted in some species, it is not known if conspecifics discriminate them, and if contagion of emotional valence occurs as a result. We tested …

Localization And Distribution Of Primary Cilia In The Adult Mouse Heart, Ali Zarban, Hannah C. Saternos, Andrea L. Kalinoski, Lijun Liu, Surya M. Nauli, Wissam A. Aboualaiwi

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Although primary cilia have been shown to play crucial roles in the development of embryonic mouse heart, their presence and function in adult mouse heart remains controversial. In this study, the presence of primary cilia in adult mouse heart was investigated. The presence of primary cilia was initially demonstrated in the surface of cardiac cells of mouse hearts from both young and adult mice by immunostaining with acetylated α-tubulin, a ciliary structural marker. The presence of cardiac primary cilia in 1-, 3-, 6- and 12-month old mice was further confirmed by staining heart tissues with an antibody against pericentrin, a …

Vocal Individuality And Species Divergence In The Contact Calls Of Banded Penguins, Livio Favaro, Claudia Gili, Cristiano Da Rugna, Guido Gnone, Chiara Fissore, Daniel Sanchez, Alan G. Mcelligott, Marco Gamba, Daniela Pessani

Bioacoustics Collection

Penguins produce contact calls to maintain social relationships and group cohesion. Such vocalisations have recently been demonstrated to encode individual identity information in the African penguin. Using a source-filter theory approach, we investigated whether acoustic cues of individuality can also be found in other Spheniscus penguins and the acoustic features of contact calls have diverged within this genus. We recorded vocalisations from two ex-situ colonies of Humboldt penguin and Magellanic penguin (sympatric and potentially interbreeding in the wild) and one ex-situ group of African penguins (allopatric although capable of interbreeding with the other two species in captivity). We measured 14 …

Expression Of Emotional Arousal In Two Different Piglet Call Types, Linhart Pavel, Victoria F. Ratcliffe, David Reby, Marek Špinka

Bioacoustics Collection

Humans as well as many animal species reveal their emotional state in their voice. Vocal features show strikingly similar correlation patterns with emotional states across mammalian species, suggesting that the vocal expression of emotion follows highly conserved signalling rules. To fully understand the principles of emotional signalling in mammals it is, however, necessary to also account for any inconsistencies in the way that they are acoustically encoded. Here we investigate whether the expression of emotions differs between call types produced by the same species. We compare the acoustic structure of two common piglet calls—the scream (a distress call) and the …

The Development Of Skeletal Muscle In Young Horses: An Ultrasonography And Satellite Cell Approach, Emma K. Lavigne

Honors Scholar Theses

Muscle growth in young horses is characterized by an increase in muscle cross-sectional area, which can be accomplished through the activation and differentiation of satellite cells. Satellite cells can be stimulated or inhibited in response to different cytokines and growth factors and are key mediators of muscle hypertrophy and regeneration. The aim of this study was to investigate the growth of the longissimus dorsi (LD) muscle in horses under 5 years of age and to obtain preliminary data on satellite cell behavior in foals. The area, width, height, and subcutaneous fat were measured using ultrasonography at 6-month increments over the …

A General Framework For Animal Density Estimation From Acoustic Detections Across A Fixed Microphone Array, Ben C. Stevenson, David L. Borchers, Res Altwegg, René Swift, Douglas M. Gillespie, G. John Measey

Bioacoustics Collection

1. Acoustic monitoring can be an efficient, cheap, non‐invasive alternative to physical trapping of individuals. Spatially explicit capture–recapture (SECR) methods have been proposed to estimate calling animal abundance and density from data collected by a fixed array of microphones. However, these methods make some assumptions that are unlikely to hold in many situations, and the consequences of violating these are yet to be investigated.
2. We generalize existing acoustic SECR methodology, enabling these methods to be used in a much wider variety of situations. We incorporate time‐of‐arrival (TOA) data collected by the microphone array, increasing the precision of calling animal density estimates. …

Acoustic Divergence In The Rut Vocalizations Of Persian And European Fallow Deer, J. B. Stachowicz, E. Vannoni, B. J. Pitcher, Elodie F. Briefer, E. Geffen, A. G. Mcelligott

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

We conducted a study of the male rut vocalizations (groans) of two closely related species, Persian and European fallow deer. Persian fallow deer are endangered, restricted to Iran and Israel, and their rut vocalizations have never been studied. By contrast, European fallow deer are one of the most common deer species in the world, and have been the subject of numerous detailed studies. Persian bucks are approximately 16% larger than European bucks, and this can have important implications for vocalizations. Persian bucks were recorded in Israel, and European bucks were recorded in the UK and Ireland. We measured temporal, fundamental …

Dog Behavior Co-Varies With Height, Bodyweight And Skull Shape, Paul D. Mcgreevy, Dana Georgevsky, Johanna Carrasco, Michael Valenzuela, Deborah L. Duffy, James A. Serpell

Eidonomy Collection

Dogs offer unique opportunities to study correlations between morphology and behavior because skull shapes and body shape are so diverse among breeds. Several studies have shown relationships between canine cephalic index (CI: the ratio of skull width to skull length) and neural architecture. Data on the CI of adult, show-quality dogs (six males and six females) were sourced in Australia along with existing data on the breeds’ height, bodyweight and related to data on 36 behavioral traits of companion dogs (n = 8,301) of various common breeds (n = 49) collected internationally using the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire …

Real-Time Bioacoustics Monitoring And Automated Species Identification, T. Mitchell Aide, Carlos Corrada-Bravo, Marconi Campos-Cerqueira, Carlos Milan, Giovany Vega, Rafael Alvarez

Bioacoustics Collection

Traditionally, animal species diversity and abundance is assessed using a variety of methods that are generally costly, limited in space and time, and most importantly, they rarely include a permanent record. Given the urgency of climate change and the loss of habitat, it is vital that we use new technologies to improve and expand global biodiversity monitoring to thousands of sites around the world. In this article, we describe the acoustical component of the Automated Remote Biodiversity Monitoring Network (ARBIMON), a novel combination of hardware and software for automating data acquisition, data management, and species identification based on audio recordings. …

Estimating Animal Population Density Using Passive Acoustics, Tiago A. Marques, Len Thomas, Stephen W. Martin, David K. Mellinger, Jessica A. Ward, Danielle Harris, Peter L. Tyack

Bioacoustics Collection

Reliable estimation of the size or density of wild animal populations is very important for effective wildlife management, conservation and ecology. Currently, the most widely used methods for obtaining such estimates involve either sighting animals from transect lines or some form of capture-recapture on marked or uniquely identifiable individuals. However, many species are difficult to sight, and cannot be easily marked or recaptured. Some of these species produce readily identifiable sounds, providing an opportunity to use passive acoustic data to estimate animal density. In addition, even for species for which other visually based methods are feasible, passive acoustic methods offer …

Your Attention Please: Increasing Ambient Noise Levels Elicits A Change In Communication Behaviour In Humpback Whales (Megaptera Novaeangliae), Rebecca A. Dunlop, Douglas H. Cato, Michael J. Noad

Bioacoustics Collection

High background noise is an important obstacle in successful signal detection and perception of an intended acoustic signal. To overcome this problem, many animals modify their acoustic signal by increasing the repetition rate, duration, amplitude or frequency range of the signal. An alternative method to ensure successful signal reception, yet to be tested in animals, involves the use of two different types of signal, where one signal type may enhance the other in periods of high background noise. Humpback whale communication signals comprise two different types: vocal signals, and surface-generated signals such as ‘breaching’ or ‘pectoral slapping’. We found that …

Automatic Recognition Of Frog Calls Using A Multi-Stage Average Spectrum, Wen-Ping Chen, Song-Shyong Chen, Chun-Cheng Lin, Ya-Zhung Chen, Wen-Chih Lin

Bioacoustics Collection

The automatic recognition of animal sounds is one of the powerful techniques for replacing the traditional ecological survey method that mainly depends on manpower, which is hence both costly and time consuming. This study developed an automatic frog call recognition system based on the combination of a pre-classification method of the syllable lengths and a multi-stage average spectrum (MSAS) method. In this system, the input frog syllables are first classified into one of the four groups determined by the pre-classification method according to syllable length. Then the proposed MSAS method is used to extract the standard feature template to analyze …

Fallow Bucks Get Hoarse: Vocal Fatigue As A Possible Signal To Conspecifics, Elisabetta Vannoni, Alan G. Mcelligott

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Many studies of sexually selected vocal communication assume that calls remain stable throughout the breeding season. However, during this period, physiological and social factors change and these can have strong effects on the structure of calls and calling rates. During the rut, fallow bucks, Dama dama, reduce their feeding and increase the time and energy spent on vocalizing and fighting to gain matings, and consequently their body condition declines greatly. The availability of matings and intensity of competition between males also change. Therefore, we predicted that male vocal signalling would vary over time in response to the changing intersexual and …

Using Self-Organizing Maps To Recognize Acoustic Units Associated With Information Content In Animal Vocalizations, John Placer, C. N. Slobodchikoff, Jason Burns, Jeffrey Placer, Ryan Middleton

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Kohonen self-organizing neural networks, also called self-organizing maps (SOMs), have been used successfully to recognize human phonemes and in this way to aid in human speech recognition. This paper describes how SOMS also can be used to associate specific information content with animal vocalizations. A SOM was used to identify acoustic units in Gunnison’s prairie dog alarm calls that were vocalized in the presence of three different predator species. Some of these acoustic units and their combinations were found exclusively in the alarm calls associated with a particular predator species and were used to associate predator species information with individual …

Acoustic Structures In The Alarm Calls Of Gunnison’S Prairie Dogs, C. N. Slobodchikoff, J. Placer

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Acoustic structures of sound in Gunnison’s prairie dog alarm calls are described, showing how these acoustic structures may encode information about three different predator species (red-tailed hawk—Buteo jamaicensis; domestic dog—Canis familaris; and coyote—Canis latrans). By dividing each alarm call into 25 equal-sized partitions and using resonant frequencies within each partition, commonly occurring acoustic structures were identified as components of alarm calls for the three predators. Although most of the acoustic structures appeared in alarm calls elicited by all three predator species, the frequency of occurrence of these acoustic structures varied among the alarm calls for the different predators, suggesting that …

Observations And Possible Function Of The Striking Anterior Coloration Pattern Of Galathea Intermedia (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura), J. M. Hall-Spencer, P. G. Moore, L. U. Sneddon

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Galathea intermedia is common, but cryptic, on Clyde maerl deposits where it lives in small groups of mixed sex and age, sharing shelters (typically dead Dosinia shells) to avoid predation. Its appearance is marked by six iridescent blue spots which may play an important role in intra- or interspecific interactions.

Mechanisms Of American English Vowel Production In A Grey Parrot (Psittacus Erithacus), Denice K. Warren, Dianne K. Patterson, Irene M. Pepperberg

Sentience Collection

Parrots are known for their capacity to reproduce the sounds of human speech, but few studies have investigated their mechanisms for producing such vocalizations. Using three methods of noninvasive video imaging (Super VHS video, infrared, X-ray radiography), we examined correlations between several elements of a Grey Parrot's (Psittacus erithacus) vocal-tract configuration and the bird's production of two vowels, /i/ ("eat") and /a/ ("rock"). This parrot uses mechanisms that both resemble and differ from those used by: (a) humans to produce English speech; and (b) some avian species to produce conspecific vocalizations. This Grey Parrot, for example, uses its vocal apparatus …

Specificity Of The Cardiac Response To Conspecific Vocalizations In Chimpanzees, Gary G. Berntson, Sarah T. Boysen

Sentience Collection

Heart rate measures were used to examine the functional response of young chimpanzees and orangutans to acoustic stimuli, including white noise and chimpanzee vocalizations (threat, stress, and alarm). The initial response of the animals to all stimuli was characterized by a prominent cardiac deceleration and an increase in heart period variability. The deceleratory responses persisted with repeated presentations of the noise, stress, and alarm stimuli. In contrast, the response of chimpanzees to the conspecific threat stimulus reverted over trials to a notable cardiac acceleration. This acceleratory response was not attributable to potential patterns of evoked somatic responses. The features of …

Eavesdropping By Bats: The Influence Of Echolocation Call Design And Foraging Strategy, Jonathan Balcombe, M. Brock Fenton

Sentience Collection

We used playback presentations to free-flying bats of 3 species to assess the influence of echolocation call design and foraging strategy on the role of echolocation calls in communication. Near feeding sites over water, Myotis lucifugus and M. yumanensis responded positively only to echolocation calls of conspecifics. Near roosts, these bats did not respond before young of the year became volant, and after this responded to presentations of echolocation calls of similar and dissimilar design. At feeding sites Lasiurus borealis responded only to echolocation calls of conspecifics and particularly to "feeding buzzes". While Myotis, particularly subadults, appear to use the …