Showing papers in "Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 2021"

TL;DR: In this article, the authors review current knowledge on farm animal vocalisations putatively associated with positive emotions and discuss the potential of vocalisations as an on-farm tool to assess positive emotions in farm animals.

TL;DR: The authors assessed what challenges researchers encountered during lockdown and whether gender, career level, discipline, and job-permanency influenced their experiences (negative and positive), thereby collecting empirical material which could provide valuable information for future mentoring/supporting practices.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the impact of abrupt and prolonged removal of visitors on two popular zoo species, including meerkats and African penguins, during COVID-19 zoo closures and up to one month following reopening to the public.

TL;DR: A comprehensive overview of the behavioural asymmetries for the sensory and motor functions related to emotional functioning of domestic animals is presented to support the use of laterality as a tool to evaluate animal emotional processing, and therefore, their welfare.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors collected data on the activity patterns of owned domestic dogs from Guatemala and Indonesia and of farm dogs (n = 11) and family dogs(n = 20) in Switzerland for 2.4-7 days and measured the BarkPoints (a continuous activity metric recorded by the FitBark tracker) for each hour in the 24-hour cycle.

TL;DR: Evidence is found that many species of insects, across a broad range of taxonomic Orders, are assumed and/or confirmed to be capable of a range of cognitive abilities, and that there is reason to believe that some species may also feel important emotional states such as stress.

TL;DR: It is suggested that enrichment should be used when keeping captive snakes because the provision of environmental complexity to the enclosure was beneficial to the behaviour and welfare of captive corn snakes.

TL;DR: It is suggested that laterality has wide-spread consequences for fish behaviour and a better understanding of how laterality shapes and interacts with fish behaviour may provide opportunities to enhance fish welfare.

TL;DR: Results showed that in the enriched environment, at the same age slower- growing broilers made more use of provided enrichment materials than fast-growing broilers (P), to achieve similar energy and nutrient intake compared to the EE treatment.

TL;DR: It is hypothesised that pigs kept with littermates would show more positive social interactions than pigs socially mixed after weaning, and that social interactions would change over time as mixed groups progressively regained social stability.

TL;DR: The dog was perceived as a source of support during the COVID-19 pandemic: 65 % of the respondents indicated reduced tension due to their dog and 47 % indicated that the ability to walk the dog outside was another benefit.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on animal behaviour and welfare researchers' work experience and productivity, focussing on gender, care role, career stage and teaching load.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated whether professional riders agree in their scoring of rideability, and whether rideability scores are affected by rein tension, horse conflict behaviour, heart rate, and salivary cortisol.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted an online survey among German-speaking alpaca caretakers to investigate associations between caretaker attitudes and handling practices (i.e., frequency of different types of contact, and the use of training).

TL;DR: In this article, a camera system that uses the optical flow patterns made by the movements of flocks of broiler chickens to monitor bird welfare has been developed on a small scale.

TL;DR: Although a number of BI were identified as useful, it is likely that development of a structured ethogram and training would be required to allow assessment of BIs to be used successfully in the veterinary clinic to reduce the likelihood of human injuries.

TL;DR: It is concluded that feeding patterns are a promising tool to monitor generic pig welfare and that a wider range of clinical diseases should be studied before this knowledge can be applied.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the behavior of red foxes and other mammalian carnivores at conspecific and heterospecific carnivore carcasses using videos recorded by camera traps.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe protocols for two preferential-looking attention bias tasks with 109 rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, who had been trained to sit by a target, but received no other training.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used pre-collected data from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) survey, during which owners tested their dogs' paw preference in retrieving food from a tube in 3 consecutive trials.

TL;DR: The results were promising; the movement sensor at the back yielded up to 91 % accuracy in classifying the dog activities and the sensor placed at the collar yielded 75 % accuracy at best; the most distinct activity was sniffing, whereas the static postures were the most challenging behaviours to classify.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the current knowledge of the links between laterality and stable individual traits in behaviour and affect in light of hypotheses on emotional lateralization, and make recommendations on how to investigate affective styles in non-human animals and give practical examples.

TL;DR: It seems that bilateral but also LH theta activity is a promising neurophysiological marker of good welfare in horses, while a bilateral or RH high production of gamma waves should alert about potential welfare alterations.

TL;DR: This experiment was designed to determine whether dogs trained on mixtures of three or five different odors would detect the individual odors when each component was tested, and results show that the dogs were able to respond to each of the components on their first trial.

TL;DR: One Welfare describes the interconnection between animal welfare, human wellbeing and their physical and social environment as mentioned in this paper, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed clear interconnections between animals, people and their environment from both a health and a welfare perspective.

TL;DR: Both fear and aggression within veterinary clinics are related to dog personality, previous early experiences and veterinary clinic experiences, and owner experiences during veterinary visits, suggesting some correlation in behaviour amongst dogs owned by the same person.

TL;DR: These results have universal applicability to assess welfare indices of other captive species in Indian zoos and it is hoped that the results will encourage zoo managers and regulatory agencies to improve animal welfare practices.

TL;DR: In this article, a review of various methods used to assess preferential paw use in the domestic dog and cat, highlighting outcome measures and methodological issues to consider in the case of implementation is presented.

TL;DR: No clear evidence that these macaques were impacted by the return of zoo visitors is found and experts remain confident that such voluntary touchscreen opportunities can be an engaging aspect of animal lives in zoo settings.

TL;DR: Whether, in the moderately warm conditions of a northern European summer, sheep will access shade of they have access to it, and if sheep with no access to shade in a northern Europe summer show behaviours indicative of poor welfare, including measures of panting scores and other indicators of heat stress are considered.