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Articles 151 - 180 of 242
Full-Text Articles in Animal Studies
How Animals Communicate Quality Of Life: The Qualitative Assessment Of Behaviour, F. Wemelsfelder
How Animals Communicate Quality Of Life: The Qualitative Assessment Of Behaviour, F. Wemelsfelder
Sentience Collection
The notion ‘quality of life’ (QoL) suggests that welfare in animals encompasses more than just an absence of suffering; it concerns the quality of an animal’s entire relationship with its environment, of how it lives its life. Judgements of such quality are based on the integration of perceived details of how animals behave over time in different contexts. The scientific status of such judgements has long been ambiguous, but in recent decades has begun to be addressed by animal scientists. This paper starts with a brief review of qualitative approaches to the study of animal behaviour, which tend to address …
Critter Psychology: On The Possibility Of Nonhuman Animal Folk Psychology, Kristin Andrews
Critter Psychology: On The Possibility Of Nonhuman Animal Folk Psychology, Kristin Andrews
Psychology Collection
No abstract provided.
Impact Of Environmental Disturbance On The Stability And Benefits Of Individual Status Within Dominance Hierarchies, Lynne U. Sneddon, Sophie Hawkesworth, Victoria A. Braithwaite, Julia Yerbury
Impact Of Environmental Disturbance On The Stability And Benefits Of Individual Status Within Dominance Hierarchies, Lynne U. Sneddon, Sophie Hawkesworth, Victoria A. Braithwaite, Julia Yerbury
Ethology Collection
Changes in environmental conditions affect social interactions and thus may modify an individual’s competitive ability within a social group. We subjected three-spined sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus, housed in groups of four individuals, to environmental perturbations to assess the impact on dominance hierarchy stability. Hierarchy stability decreased during increased turbulence or lowered water levels (‘simulated drought’) whereas control hierarchies became more stable in a constant environment. The dominant individual either became more aggressive and remained dominant during the environmental manipulation or was usurped by a lower rank member. Only simulated drought affected rates of aggression where levels of aggression were higher after …
Behaviour Development: A Cephalopod Perspective, Jennifer A. Mather
Behaviour Development: A Cephalopod Perspective, Jennifer A. Mather
Interactive Behavior Collection
This paper evaluates the development of behaviour from the viewpoint of the intelligent and learningdependent cephalopod mollusks as a contrast to that of mammals. They have a short lifespan, commonly one to two years, and most are semelparous, reproducing only near the end of their lifespan. In the first two months of life, Sepia officinalis cuttlefish show drastic limitation on learning of prey choice and capture, gradually acquiring first short-term and then long-term learning over 60 days. This is paralleled by development of the vertical lobe of the brain which processes visually learned information. In the long nonreproductive adulthood, Octopus …
K-Means Clustering With Multiresolution Peak Detection, Guanshan Yu, Leen-Kiat Soh, Alan B. Bond
K-Means Clustering With Multiresolution Peak Detection, Guanshan Yu, Leen-Kiat Soh, Alan B. Bond
Avian Cognition Papers
Clustering is a practical data mining approach of pattern detection. Because of the sensitivity of initial conditions, k-means clustering often suffers from low clustering performance. We present a procedure to refine initial conditions of k-means clustering by analyzing density distributions of a data set before estimating the number of clusters k necessary for the data set, as well as the positions of the initial centroids of the clusters. We demonstrate that this approach indeed improves the accuracy and performance of k-means clustering measured by average intra to interclustering error ratio. This method is applied to the virtual ecology project to …
Indoor Cats, Scratching, And The Debate Over Declawing: When Normal Pet Behavior Becomes A Problem, Katherine C. (Kasey) Grier, Nancy Peterson
Indoor Cats, Scratching, And The Debate Over Declawing: When Normal Pet Behavior Becomes A Problem, Katherine C. (Kasey) Grier, Nancy Peterson
State of the Animals 2005
When pet animals share our living spaces, their needs and natural behaviors sometimes are at odds with the varying standards for household appearance, sanitation, and polite social life that Americans have established over time. How pet owners have resolved these issues provides insight into their changing ideas about the role of animals in their households and suggests how much, or how little, people may actually know about the biological behaviors and psychological needs of the creatures they care for. This essay examines one particular issue associated with the problem of sharing spaces: declawing pet cats as a common solution to …
Wild Justice And Fair Play: Cooperation, Forgiveness, And Morality In Animals, Marc Bekoff
Wild Justice And Fair Play: Cooperation, Forgiveness, And Morality In Animals, Marc Bekoff
Ethology Collection
In this paper I argue that we can learn much about ‘wild justice’ and the evolutionary origins of social morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living animals, and that interdisciplinary cooperation will help immensely. In our efforts to learn more about the evolution of morality we need to broaden our comparative research to include animals other than non-human primates. If one is a good Darwinian, it is premature to claim that only humans can be empathic and moral beings. By asking the question ‘What is it like to be another animal?’ we can discover rules …
The Selfish Nature Of Generosity: Harassment And Food Sharing In Primates, Jeffrey R. Stevens
The Selfish Nature Of Generosity: Harassment And Food Sharing In Primates, Jeffrey R. Stevens
Jeffrey Stevens Publications
Animals may share food to gain immediate or delayed fitness benefits. Previous studies of sharing have concentrated on delayed benefits such as reciprocity, trade and punishment. This study tests an alternative model (the harassment or sharing–under–pressure hypothesis) in which a food owner immediately benefits because sharing avoids costly harassment from a beggar. I present an experiment that varies the potential ability of the beggar to harass, and of the owner to defend the food, to examine the effects of harassment on food sharing in two primate species: chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri boliviensis). For …
A Conceptual Framework For Non-Kin Food Sharing: Timing And Currency Of Benefits, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Ian C. Gilby
A Conceptual Framework For Non-Kin Food Sharing: Timing And Currency Of Benefits, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Ian C. Gilby
Jeffrey Stevens Publications
Many animal species, from arthropods to apes, share food. This paper presents a new framework that categorizes nonkin food sharing according to two axes: (1) the interval between sharing and receiving the benefits of sharing, and (2) the currency units in which benefits accrue to the sharer (especially food versus nonfood). Sharers can obtain immediate benefits from increased foraging efficiency, predation avoidance, mate provisioning, or manipulative mutualism. Reciprocity, trade, status enhancement and group augmentation can delay benefits. When benefits are delayed or when food is exchanged for nonfood benefits, maintaining sharing can become more difficult because animals face discounting and …
Environmental Enrichment And Prior Experience Of Live Prey Improve Foraging Behaviour In Hatchery-Reared Atlantic Salmon, C. Brown, T. Davidson, K. Laland
Environmental Enrichment And Prior Experience Of Live Prey Improve Foraging Behaviour In Hatchery-Reared Atlantic Salmon, C. Brown, T. Davidson, K. Laland
Aquaculture Collection
Atlantic salmon salmo salar L. parr were reared for 3 months under standard hatchery conditions or in a structurally enriched tank (containing plants, rocks and novel objects). Half of each of these fish had prior exposure to live prey in the form of live bloodworm while the other half were fed hatchery-pellets. After 12 days all fish were tested on a novel live prey item (brine shrimp). A significant interaction between the two factors (prior exposure to live prey and rearing condition) revealed that foraging performance was only enhanced in fish that had been reared in a complex environment and …
Habitat-Predator Association And Avoidance In Rainbowfish (Melanotaenia Spp.), Culum Brown
Habitat-Predator Association And Avoidance In Rainbowfish (Melanotaenia Spp.), Culum Brown
Sentience Collection
The ability to recall the location of a predator and later avoid it was tested in nine populations of rainbowfish (Melanotaenia spp.), representing three species from a variety of environments. Following the introduction of a model predator into a particular microhabitat, the model was removed, the arena rotated and the distribution of the fish recorded again. In this manner it could be determined what cues the fish relied on in order to recall the previous location of the predator model. Fish from all populations but one (Dirran Creek) were capable of avoiding the predator by remembering either the location and/or …
Play And The Evolution Of Fairness: A Game Theory Model, Lee Alan Dugatkin, Marc Bekoff
Play And The Evolution Of Fairness: A Game Theory Model, Lee Alan Dugatkin, Marc Bekoff
Ethology Collection
Bekoff [J. Consci. Stud. 8 (2001) 81] argued that mammalian social play is a useful behavioral phenotype on which to concentrate in order to learn more about the evolution of fairness. Here, we build a game theoretical model designed to formalize some of the ideas laid out by Bekoff, and to examine whether ‘fair’ strategies can in fact be evolutionarily stable. The models we present examine fairness at two different developmental stages during an individual’s ontogeny, and hence we create four strategies--fair at time 1/fair at time 2, not fair at time 1/not fair at time 2, fair at time …
Do Female Rainbowfish (Melanotaenia Spp.) Prefer To Shoal With Familiar Individuals Under Predation Pressure?, Culum Brown
Do Female Rainbowfish (Melanotaenia Spp.) Prefer To Shoal With Familiar Individuals Under Predation Pressure?, Culum Brown
Sentience Collection
Shoaling with familiar individuals may have many benefits including enhanced escape responses or increased foraging efficiency. This study describes the results of two complimentary experiments. The first utilised a simple binary choice experiment to determine if rainbowfish (Melanotaenia spp.) preferred to shoal with familiar individuals or with strangers. The second experiment used a “free range” situation where familiar and unfamiliar individuals were free to intermingle and were then exposed to a predator threat. Like many other small species of fish, rainbowfish were capable of identifying and distinguishing between individuals and choose to preferentially associate with familiar individuals as opposed to …
Vigilance And Predation Risk In Gunnison’S Prairie Dogs (Cynomys Gunnisoni), J. L. Verdolin, C. N. Slobodchikoff
Vigilance And Predation Risk In Gunnison’S Prairie Dogs (Cynomys Gunnisoni), J. L. Verdolin, C. N. Slobodchikoff
Sentience Collection
Group living in animals is believed to confer advantages related to a decrease in predation risk and an energetic trade-off between vigilance and foraging efficiency. Eight Gunnison’s prairie dog, Cynomys gunnisoni, colonies in Flagstaff, Arizona (elevation 2300 m), were studied from April to August 2000 to examine the adaptive significance of colonial living in the context of predation risk and antipredator behavioral strategies. Each colony was sampled once every 10 days for a period of 3 h. Upright and quadrepedal vigilance was recorded using scan samples. All predation events were recorded. Results suggest that vigilant behavior in Gunnison’s prairie dogs …
Discounting And Reciprocity In An Iterated Prisoner’S Dilemma, David W. Stephens, Colleen M. Mclinn, Jeffrey R. Stevens
Discounting And Reciprocity In An Iterated Prisoner’S Dilemma, David W. Stephens, Colleen M. Mclinn, Jeffrey R. Stevens
Jeffrey Stevens Publications
The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) is a central paradigm in the study of animal cooperation. According to the IPD framework, repeated play (repetition) and reciprocity combine to maintain a cooperative equilibrium. However, experimental studies with animals suggest that cooperative behavior in IPDs is unstable, and some have suggested that strong preferences for immediate benefits (that is, temporal discounting) might explain the fragility of cooperative equilibria. We studied the effects of discounting and strategic reciprocity on cooperation in captive blue jays. Our results demonstrate an interaction between discounting and reciprocity. Blue jays show high stable levels of cooperation in treatments with …
The Evolution Of Animal Play, Emotions, And Social Morality: On Science, Theology, Spirituality, Personhood, And Love, Marc Bekoff
The Evolution Of Animal Play, Emotions, And Social Morality: On Science, Theology, Spirituality, Personhood, And Love, Marc Bekoff
Attitudes Towards Animals Collection
My essay first takes me into the arena in which science, spirituality, and theology meet. I comment on the enterprise of science and how scientists could well benefit from reciprocal interactions with theologians and religious leaders. Next, I discuss the evolution of social morality and the ways in which various aspects of social play behavior relate to the notion of “behaving fairly.” The contributions of spiritual and religious perspectives are important in our coming to a fuller understanding of the evolution of morality. I go on to discuss animal emotions, the concept of personhood, and how our special relationships with …
Interactions Between Shoal Size And Conformity In Guppy Social Foraging, Rachel L. Day, Tom Macdonald, Culum Brown, Kevin N. Laland, Simon M. Reader
Interactions Between Shoal Size And Conformity In Guppy Social Foraging, Rachel L. Day, Tom Macdonald, Culum Brown, Kevin N. Laland, Simon M. Reader
Sentience Collection
Previous experimental studies have established that shoaling fish forage more effectively in large than small groups. We investigated how shoal size affects the foraging efficiency of laboratory populations of the guppy, Poecilia reticulata, exposed to different foraging tasks. Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction that in open water the first fish and focal fish of larger shoals locate food faster than in smaller shoals. However, a second experiment, in which shoals of fish were required to swim through a hole in an opaque partition to locate food, found the reverse pattern: smaller shoals learned to complete the task faster than large …
Familiarity Facilitates Social Learning Of Foraging Behaviour In The Guppy, Will Swaney, Jeremy Kendal, Hannah Capon, Culum Brown, Kevin N. Laland
Familiarity Facilitates Social Learning Of Foraging Behaviour In The Guppy, Will Swaney, Jeremy Kendal, Hannah Capon, Culum Brown, Kevin N. Laland
Sentience Collection
Previous studies have shown that guppies, Poecilia reticulata, can learn the route to a food source by shoaling with knowledgeable conspecifics, and prefer to shoal with experienced foragers and familiar fish. We tested the hypothesis that guppies would learn more effectively from (1) familiar than unfamiliar demonstrators and (2) well-trained than poorly trained demonstrators. Demonstrator fish were given experience in swimming a route to a food source and then introduced into shoals of untrained observer guppies; the spread of this foraging skill was recorded over 15 trials. The demonstrators were either familiar or unfamiliar to the observers and either well …
Observations Of Scent-Marking And Discriminating Self From Others By A Domestic Dog (Canis Familiaris): Tales Of Displaced Yellow Snow, Marc Bekoff
Ethology Collection
Little is known about what stimuli trigger urinating or scent-marking in domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, or their wild relatives. While it is often suggested that the urine of other animals influences urinating and scent-marking patterns in canids, this has not been verified experimentally. To investigate the role of urine in eliciting urinating and marking, in this pilot study I moved urine-saturated snow (‘yellow snow’) from place-to-place during five winters to compare the responses of an adult male domestic dog, Jethro, to his own and others’ urine. Jethro spent less time sniffing his own urine than that of other males or …
Assessing The ‘Whole Animal’: A Free Choice Profiling Approach, Françoise Wemelsfelder, Tony E.A. Hunter, Michael T. Mendl, Alistair B. Lawrence
Assessing The ‘Whole Animal’: A Free Choice Profiling Approach, Françoise Wemelsfelder, Tony E.A. Hunter, Michael T. Mendl, Alistair B. Lawrence
Sentience Collection
The qualitative assessment of animal behaviour summarizes the different aspects of an animal’s dynamic style of interaction with the environment, using descriptors such as ‘confident’, ‘nervous’, ‘calm’ or ‘excitable’. Scientists frequently use such terms in studies of animal personality and temperament, but, wary of anthropomorphism, are reluctant to do so in studies of animal welfare. We hypothesize that qualitative behaviour assessment, in describing behaviour as an expressive process, may have a stronger observational foundation than is currently recognized, and may be of use as an integrative welfare assessment tool. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the inter- and intraobserver reliability …
Mammalian Play: Training For The Unexpected, Marek Špinka, Ruth C. Newberry, Marc Bekoff
Mammalian Play: Training For The Unexpected, Marek Špinka, Ruth C. Newberry, Marc Bekoff
Ethology Collection
In this review, we present a new conceptual framework for the study of play behavior, a hitherto puzzling array of seemingly purposeless and unrelated behavioral elements that are recognizable as play throughout the mammalian lineage. Our major new functional hypothesis is that play enables animals to develop flexible kinematic and emotional responses to unexpected events in which they experience a sudden loss of control. Specifically, we propose that play functions to increase the versatility of movements used to recover from sudden shock such as loss of balance and falling over, and to enhance the ability of animals to cope emotionally …
Social Play Behaviour: Cooperation, Fairness, Trust, And The Evolution Of Morality, Marc Bekoff
Social Play Behaviour: Cooperation, Fairness, Trust, And The Evolution Of Morality, Marc Bekoff
Ethology Collection
No abstract provided.
Mixing At Young Ages Reduces Fighting In Unacquainted Domestic Pigs, Anton D. Pitts, Daniel M. Weary, Edmond A. Pajor, David Fraser
Mixing At Young Ages Reduces Fighting In Unacquainted Domestic Pigs, Anton D. Pitts, Daniel M. Weary, Edmond A. Pajor, David Fraser
Agonistic Behavior Collection
Under normal farming practices, piglets from different litters are often mixed around the time of weaning, and a high incidence of fighting and minor injuries often occur. The aim of this experiment was to determine the effect of age on the incidence of fighting in piglets mixed before weaning, at different ages between 5 and 26 days. We found no significant relationship between age and the likelihood that a pair of piglets would fight during the first 75 min after mixing. However, the duration of the first fight observed increased from 101±38 s at 5 days to 621±278 s at …
Bubble Ring Play Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus): Implications For Cognition, Brenda Mccowan, Lori Marino, Erik Vance, Leah Walke, Diana Reiss
Bubble Ring Play Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus): Implications For Cognition, Brenda Mccowan, Lori Marino, Erik Vance, Leah Walke, Diana Reiss
Sentience Collection
Research on the cognitive capacities of dolphins and other cetaceans (whales and porpoises) has importance for the study of comparative cognition, particularly with other large-brained social mammals, such as primates. One of the areas in which cetaceans can be compared with primates is that of object manipulation and physical causality, for which there is an abundant body of literature in primates. The authors supplemented qualitative observations with statistical methods to examine playful bouts of underwater bubble ring production and manipulation in 4 juvenile male captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). The results are consistent with the hypothesis that dolphins monitor the …
Regulation Of Contact With Offspring By Domestic Sows: Temporal Patterns And Individual Variation, E. A. Pajor, D. L. Kramer, D. Fraser
Regulation Of Contact With Offspring By Domestic Sows: Temporal Patterns And Individual Variation, E. A. Pajor, D. L. Kramer, D. Fraser
Rearing Behavior Collection
We used a sow-controlled housing system to examine temporal and individual variation in the tendency of sows to associate with young. During a 5-week lactation, 22 sows and litters were housed in a pen where the sow could freely leave and re-enter the piglets' area by stepping over a barrier that the piglets could not cross. Despite this option, the sows remained with the piglets almost constantly during the 1st day after birth. Nineteen sows ('leavers') changed to spending most of their time away from the litter at some point in the lactation. The change was rapid, often within a …
Social Mechanisms Enhance Escape Responses In Shoals Of Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia Duboulayi, Culum Brown, Kevin Warburton
Social Mechanisms Enhance Escape Responses In Shoals Of Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia Duboulayi, Culum Brown, Kevin Warburton
Aquaculture Collection
Shoaling behaviour has been shown to provide many benefits to group members. In this study we examined the ability of fish shoals to escape from a novel trawl apparatus. Fish in shoals of 5 found, and escaped through, a hole in the oncoming trawl more quickly than fish in pairs. Fish in the larger shoals displayed a significant decrease in escape latencies over a series of five trawls, providing clear evidence of net avoidance learning, whereas fish in pairs showed no evidence of learning over successive runs. Observations suggested that more information on the location of the escape route was …
Predicting Flock Vigilance From Simple Passerine Interactions: Modelling With Cellular Automata, David B. Bahr, Marc Bekoff
Predicting Flock Vigilance From Simple Passerine Interactions: Modelling With Cellular Automata, David B. Bahr, Marc Bekoff
Ethology Collection
Vigilance in flocks can be described and modelled as a plausible set of local interactions between neighbouring birds. Each bird in the modelled flock chooses to feed or to scan based solely on whether or not its neighbours are feeding or scanning. This simple model has the ability both to reproduce observations that have not been previously explained and to predict flock behaviours that might be confirmed with future field studies. Examples include simulations showing decreased vigilance with increased flock size (as observed in the field), greater time spent scanning when obstacles such as trees are present (as observed) and …
Asymmetry And Fighting Performance In The Shore Crab Carcinus Maenas, Lynne U. Sneddon, John P. Swaddle
Asymmetry And Fighting Performance In The Shore Crab Carcinus Maenas, Lynne U. Sneddon, John P. Swaddle
Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection
Fluctuating asymmetries (left–right differences in symmetric traits) can be negatively related to fitness parameters in a number of biological systems. Hence, it has been suggested that symmetric individuals should outcompete asymmetric individuals during intraspecific agonistic encounters. However, there is a lack of experimental evidence for such a relationship. We investigated the relationship between trait asymmetry (both directional and fluctuating asymmetry) and the outcome of agonistic encounters among size-matched male shore crabs. Our findings indicate that cheliped (‘weapon claw’) directional asymmetry is not related to the outcome of fights, whereas fluctuating asymmetry in the fifth pereiopod, but not the second pereiopod, …
Behavioral Interactions And Conflict Among Domestic Dogs, Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs, And People In Boulder, Colorado, Marc Bekoff, Robert W. Ickes
Behavioral Interactions And Conflict Among Domestic Dogs, Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs, And People In Boulder, Colorado, Marc Bekoff, Robert W. Ickes
Ethology Collection
Interactions among domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), and people were studied at Dry Creek, Boulder, Colorado. Our objective was to develop a basic understanding of the nature of dog–prairie dog interactions in this recreational area, because this is an issue that has high visibility and over which there is conflict in Boulder: There are those who want dogs to run free regardless of their impact on the behavior and lives of prairie dogs and those who want to protect prairie dogs and have dogs restrained or go elsewhere. We found that dogs clearly influenced the behavior …
The Effect Of Proximity On Landmark Use In Clark’S Nutcrackers, Kristy L. Gould-Beierle, Alan Kamil
The Effect Of Proximity On Landmark Use In Clark’S Nutcrackers, Kristy L. Gould-Beierle, Alan Kamil
Avian Cognition Papers
Clark’s nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana, store thousands of pine seeds during the autumn and retrieve them throughout the winter. It has been shown that these birds are able to use visual cues to relocate hidden food in the laboratory. In this set of experiments, we trained three groups of Clark’s nutcrackers to find a hidden food goal that was placed in the same spatial location relative to the testing room. During training, the location of two local cues in relation to the goal differed between the three groups. Group 1 learned the task with the cues closest to the goal, group …