Lecture 11: Motivation

Question 1

What is the difference between inelastic demand and elastic demand?

Answer 1

Strength of an animals motivation: based on human consumer demand
-Inelastic demand: demand for needs (food, water reproduction) will go/do whatever the price bc need it
-Elastic demand: demand for other activities, more of a want then needs so sometimes if too expensive or too much work won’t get it/do it
-A small number of factors are essential to survival ie inelastic demand, motivation is highest to perform thesis actions (dependant on hunger, thirst and stage of the reproductive cycle)
-Motivation to perform other activities can be compared with motivation for essential needs

Question 2

What are examples of the strength of preference?

Answer 2

Laying hens work for food, shavings and feathers
-Experiment measured the work that hens (birds with high and low feather pecking activity) were prepared to:
1. Gain access ti feathers and wood shavings for consumption
2. Gain access to food

-A defined amount of work, pecking a key a certain number of times results in a fixed reward (food, shavings, feathers)

Rabbits cage size/ elevated platform
-Rabbits had to press a lever to get access to an elevated platform

Cows working for outdoor access
-Had to push a gate to access pasture

Question 3

What are emotions?

Answer 3

-Multicomponent response tendencies- incorporating hormone release, facial expression and muscle tension
-Short period of time, personal meaning, subjective behaviour
-typically begin with an individual’s assessment of the personal meaning either conscious or unconscious
-This appraisal process triggers a cascade of responses incorporating mental, physical and subjective changes

Question 4

What is sensory pleasure?

Answer 4

-Includes experiences such as satiation of hunger, thirst, and the remedying (treatment) of unpleasant states (cold, pain, or excessive noise)
-Sensory pleasure arises whenever a stimulus corrects an internal trouble (eating when hungry)
-Sensory pleasure shares with emotions a pleasant subjective feeling and may include physiological changes but an emotion also requires an appraisal of some stimulus or an assessment of meaning
-Emotion and sensation can co-occur: a good meal satisfies hunger, and also lead to feelings of contentment

Question 5

What is a mood? What is a positive mood?

Answer 5

-Emotions differ from moods in that emotions are about some personally meaningful circumstances (they have an object)
-Mood are typically free-floating or objectives and are more Long-lasting

Question 6

Why is emotion research focused on negative emotions?

Answer 6

Main reasons
-Easier to measure
-Allow respond to immediate threat (faster response)

-Negative emotions lead to single, clear, strong tendency ex FEAR is linked to the urge to escape, ANGER with the urge to attack, DISGUST with the urge to expel
-Action tendencies and physiological changes go hand in hand (fear-AND-escape)
-Behaviours that helped early humans out of life or death situations
-Observed health effects of prolonged negative emotions contribute to the impression that negative emotions are more significant

Question 7

Give a summary of the sensory input.

Answer 7

-Sensor receptors monitor hages occurring inside (ex endocrine changes) and outside (ex social environment) of the body/environment
-NC processes and interprets the sensory input
-NS effects or cases a response by activating the endocrine system/motor system (biology)
-Motivational state is reduced by consummation through a negative feedback (helps maintain “homeostasis”)

Question 8

What motivates domestic birds to behave the way they do?

Answer 8

Applied ex feather pecking.

Question 9

What are the sensory organs for chickens?

Answer 9

-Uses its beak as if it were a hand (food pecking, preening, nest building)
-Thermoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and nociceptors are mainly located in the top of the beak
-Towards the basis of the beak the number of receptors decrease
-Taste buds: 69%in upper beak 29% lower beak and 2% region of the tongue and salivary gland ducts lying adjacent as well

Question 10

What is an unsolved problem in poultry?

Answer 10

-Feather pecking
-78% severe feather pecking (FP)
-Primary cause of mortality
-can lead to decreased productivity/increased feed consumption
-impaired flight ability/increased risk of falls/collisions/bone fractures
-Up to 78% of laying hens perform feather pecking in commercial flocks

Question 11

What is feather pecking?

Answer 11

-Oral repetitive bird-bird pecking
-One hen pecks at or plucks the feathers from another hens –> can lead to cannibalism and high mortality rates

Question 12

What is the causation of feather pecking (ethological view point)?

Answer 12

-redirected foraging behaviour either from food pecking, ground pecking, dustbathing
-Multifactorial process (genetic, rearing, nutrition, lighting, etc)
-occurs in every type of housing system
-Consequences can be worse in non-cage systems where outbreaks can spread more easily
-Unavailability of suitable floor substrate increases the risk of FP (emphasizes the exploration component)
-Misperceive feathers as foraging substrate so peck at and pluck feathers

Question 13

What is foraging behaviour?

Answer 13

-Behaviour of animals when they are moving around in such a way that they are likely to encounter and acquire food
-Feeding behaviour can be divided into the appetitive phase, which is the food searching phase, and the consummatory act which is the actual consumption of the food

Question 14

TRUE OR FALSE: Animals will work for food in the presence of freely available identical food.

Answer 14

TRUE
-Want to work for food not just eat out of a bowl
-Gives the animal the possibility to gather info on alternative food sources

Question 15

What preference test/study that was done in the test arena with the 4x4 plastic holes with HFP and LFP?

Answer 15

• 20 high feather pecking and 20 low feather pecking chickens were tested on their preference food pellets, loose feathers, and fixed feathers
  -3 different sources: Hidden in the holes covered by the transparent flaps, freely available in the holes, or easily obtainable in the dished or in the metal tube next to the dish

Results
-HFP had higher in all categories then the LFP but significantly higher for loose feathers and fixed feathers
-Raises the question if HFP birds exhibit a stronger preference for feathers over wood shavings than LFP birds
-Conversely if LFP birds show a stronger preference for wood shavings then feathers

Question 16

What was the preference test that followed the original HFP and LFP chickens?

Answer 16

-In test arena 24 HFP and 24 LFP used wood shavings, feathers, food, and empty forest presences

Results
-HC birds (high FP and kept in cages)= “feather access deprivation” increased the response to approach/ eat feathers

-Raises the question of whether HFP/LFP birds have a higher demand for feathers/wood shavings as FP has been described as redirected ground pecking/foraging

Question 17

What is the operant conditioning technique for FP in chickens?

Answer 17

-Demand for feathers and wood shavings can be measured by finding out how hard an animal will work (pick a key or press a button) to gain access to its preferred choice (ex feathers) by an operant conditioning technique

-11 HFP birds, 9 LFP
-Habituation and training with food training criterion (PR 80 pecks)
-Test procedure for ratio values progressive incremented in the sequence 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 etc
-Each bird was tested in a randomized order 5 times over a period of 3 weeks for (feed, feathers, wood shavings)
-Progressive ratio schedule (ratio values were progressively incremented by 10 when a reward is earned)
-Number if pecks and latency to reinforcement were automatically recorded and stored on disk

Results
-Food was similar for LFP and HFP but feathers and shavings were bother higher for HFP

Question 18

What was the criteria for choosing feathers? White vs brown?

Answer 18

-To determine feather characteristics which increase or decrease the attractiveness of feathers for ingestion
-10 white and 10 brown chicken were transferred to individual cages
-10 white and 10 brown feathers inserted into small holes of a plastic lid and fixed to the food once every morning
-Number of feathers pulled out and eaten was recored over 10 days

Results
-Didn’t care they were relativity the same number

Question 19

What were other considerations of feathers that studies have been done on?

Answer 19

-Preferred areas of feather pecking results indicated that the neck and vent were the highest areas in HFP chickens
-Differences in feather lengths results indicated that they liked softer feathers and tips of feathers followed by the middle and end.
-Preferred feathers that were unflavoured, was hypothesized that birds avoid the usual palatable feathers when they are soaked in a bitter tasting solution, associated the bitter taste with feathers from conspecifics, and they thereby avoid FP in a group hissing situation
results
-Birds conditioned with bitter agent avoided feather pecking in group where as the feathers with sugar were had more FP

Question 20

How does feathers in chicken feed affect FP?

Answer 20

-The availability of feathers in the feed substitutes the specific appetite for feathers and reduces FP activity compared with birds provided with normal feed and birds provided with feed containing insoluble cellulose instead of feathers
-High fibre diets affect FP unclear which plant fibre content and source may be ideal to reduce FP
-Diverse group of substances of chemical and morphological complexity