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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Emotions In Goats: Mapping Physiological, Behavioural And Vocal Profiles, Elodie F. Briefer, Federico Tettamanti, Alan G. Mcelligott
Emotions In Goats: Mapping Physiological, Behavioural And Vocal Profiles, Elodie F. Briefer, Federico Tettamanti, Alan G. Mcelligott
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Emotions are important because they enable the selection of appropriate behavioural decisions in response to external or internal events. Techniques for understanding and assessing animal emotions, and particularly positive ones, are lacking. Emotions can be characterized by two dimensions: their arousal (bodily excitation) and their valence (negative or positive). Both dimensions can affect emotions in different ways. It is thus crucial to assess their effects on biological parameters simultaneously, so that accurate indicators of arousal and valence can be identified. To find convenient and noninvasive tools to assess emotions in goats, Capra hircus, we measured physiological, behavioural and vocal responses …
Artificial Neural Network Approach For Revealing Individuality, Group Membership And Age Information In Goat Kid Contact Calls, Livio Favaro, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Artificial Neural Network Approach For Revealing Individuality, Group Membership And Age Information In Goat Kid Contact Calls, Livio Favaro, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
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Machine learning techniques are becoming an important tool for studying animal vocal communication. The goat (Capra hircus) is a very social species, in which vocal communication and recognition are important. We tested the reliability of a Multi-Layer Perceptron (feed-forward Artificial Neural Network, ANN) to automate the process of classification of calls according to individual identity, group membership and maturation in this species. Vocalisations were obtained from 10 half-sibling (same father but different mothers) goat kids, belonging to 3 distinct social groups. We recorded 157 contact calls emitted during first week, and 164 additional calls recorded from the same individuals at …
Rescued Goats At A Sanctuary Display Positive Mood After Former Neglect, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Rescued Goats At A Sanctuary Display Positive Mood After Former Neglect, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
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Moods influence cognitive processes in that people in positive moods expect more positive events to occur and less negative ones (“optimistic bias”), whereas the opposite happens for people in negative moods (“pessimistic bias”). The evidence for an effect of mood on cognitive bias is also increasing in animals, suggesting that measures of optimism and pessimism could provide useful indicators of animal welfare. For obvious ethical reasons, serious poor treatments cannot be easily replicated in large mammals in order to study their long-term effects on moods. In this study, we tested the long-term effects (>2 years) of prior poor welfare …
Mother Goats Do Not Forget Their Kids’ Calls, Elodie F. Briefer, Mónica Padilla De La Torre, Alan G. Mcelligott
Mother Goats Do Not Forget Their Kids’ Calls, Elodie F. Briefer, Mónica Padilla De La Torre, Alan G. Mcelligott
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Parent–offspring recognition is crucial for offspring survival. At long distances, this recognition is mainly based on vocalizations. Because of maturation-related changes to the structure of vocalizations, parents have to learn successive call versions produced by their offspring throughout ontogeny in order to maintain recognition. However, because of the difficulties involved in following the same individuals over years, it is not clear how long this vocal memory persists. Here, we investigated long-term vocal recognition in goats. We tested responses of mothers to their kids’ calls 7–13 months after weaning. We then compared mothers’ responses to calls of their previous kids with …
Social Effects On Vocal Ontogeny In An Ungulate, The Goat, Capra Hircus, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Social Effects On Vocal Ontogeny In An Ungulate, The Goat, Capra Hircus, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
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Vocal plasticity is the ability of an individual to modify its vocalizations according to its environment. Humans benefit from an extreme form of vocal plasticity, allowing us to produce a wide range of sounds. This capacity to modify sounds has been shown in three bird orders and in a few nonhuman mammal species, all characterized by complex vocal communication systems. In other mammals, there is no evidence for a social impact on vocal development. We investigated whether contact calls were affected by social environment and kinship during early ontogeny in goats, a highly vocal and social species. To test the …
Indicators Of Age, Body Size And Sex In Goat Kid Calls Revealed Using The Source–Filter Theory, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Indicators Of Age, Body Size And Sex In Goat Kid Calls Revealed Using The Source–Filter Theory, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
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The source–filter theory is an important framework recently applied to the study of animal vocalisations, which links the mode of vocal production to call parameters. Vocalisations can be good indicators of a sender’s characteristics, such as identity, body size, age, and even hormonal status and affective states. For these reasons, applied vocal communication research would greatly benefit from adopting the source–filter theory approach to identify key call parameters linked to physical and physiological characteristics of domestic animals. Here, we introduce the source–filter theory through a detailed analysis and interpretation of goat contact calls during development. In mammals, vocal development is …