Lecture 4 Flashcards
Sick animals often have difficulty facing their environment. When an animal can’t cope with their environment, their welfare
Decreases
What is normally the first indicator of disease?
Altered behaviour
practicing veterinarians rely heavily on ______ ________ in diagnosis of illness
Behavioural observations
It is common for animal illness to be first manifested _______
Behaviourally - examples: loss of appetite, altered activity, diminished body care or lack of responsiveness
do prey species show behavioural indicators of illness?
They try not to
Hypocalcemia or milk fever in cows - what are behavioural indicators?
Lateral / stern al decubitus (lays in a certain position)
- can’t/won’t get up
Is lameness in dairy cows a behavioural indicator?
Yes! Indicates a problem somewhere in the feet/legs
The most basic way to assess whether an animal is well is to observe if?
Its behaviour is within what is expected for the species (displaying normal behaviour).
The degree of animal welfare is ______ when animals may show natural/normal behaviour
high
Successful coping with the environment includes not only physiological health, but also
The animal’s ability to perform normal behaviour according to its motivational needs
The frequency with which an animal performs natural behaviours for its species can also be used as a
Welfare indicator
Studies comparing the behaviour of farm animals kept on a farm with animals kept in semi-natural enclosures found that normal behaviours differ in
Frequency and duration
Examples of normal behaviour
Eating behaviour
Resting
Idleness
Activity
Behaviour related to thermal comfort
Social behaviour
Confided animals are offered concentrate diets, resulting in an important decrease in time required to feed, increasing idle. Is this a natural behaviour?
Yes
Opportunity to express the behavioural repertoire of the species depends on
The facility
Behaviour related to thermal comfort - examples?
Panting, searching for shade, choices of places to rest
Opportunity to express the behavioural repertoire of the species can be evaluated by
access to external area (number of days/hours)
Examples of natural behaviours performed by chickens
- nesting
- foraging
-ground scratching - perching
- dust bathing
Under natural conditions, pigs dedicate how much time to rooting?
Up to 50%
What are agonistic behaviours?
Involves all forms of behaviour associated with conflict with another animal
Examples of agonistic behaviour
Fights, threats, displacements
Usually over access to resources, hierarchy, reproduction
What are affiliate behaviours
Indicate bonds between animals
examples of affiliate behaviours
Physical proximity, allogrooming, etc
Leg shapes of cows when performing agonistic vs affiliative behaviour
Agonistic - V
Affiliative - straight legs
What is allogrooming
The cleaning of the body surface by licking, nibbling, picking, scratching, rubbing, directed at another animal
Is play behaviour a social behaviour
Yes
Play behaviour is an important stage of
Learning & has adaptive value
What does play behaviour indicate
Positive welfare
Alterations in behaviour observed in housing systems lacking specific stimuli to elicit normal behaviour are often related to
Motivational problems, and hence relevant to animal welfare
can we give good welfare to animals?
NO! But we can provide them with conditions that are good
What are abnormal behaviours
Behaviour that differs in pattern, frequency, or context from that which is shown by most members of a species
What are stereotypies
Repeated, relatively invariant sequence of movements that has no obvious purpose
In what situations are stereotypies shown
When the individual lacks control over its environment
Do stereotypies have large individual variation
Yes
Stereotypies involve neurochemical changes in the brain - What are they
Dopamine, endorphins, and their receptors
Do stereotypies alleviate the effects of adverse conditions?
No clear answer
Stereotypies indicate
Poor welfare
What is pacing / route tracing
A stereotypy that involves the animal following a path and returns to its point or origin, and often repeated with minor modifications
Is tail chasing a stereotypy
Yes - most likely to occur when a dog is exited & frustrated & usually stops when the frustrating behaviour is resolved
What is weaving
A stereotypy in horses that involves swinging the head and neck and anterior parts of the body from side to side, so weight rests alternatively on each forelimb
whats a likely cause for weaving stereotypy
Lack of variety in the environment - happens most often to horses that have been stabled for long periods in idleness
What is head shaking
A stereotypy where the head is moved vertically, laterally, or with a rotary motion of the neck
what is wind sucking
A stereotypy where air is sucked by itself or combined with head nodding or crib biting - usually in horses
Horses are more likely to show wind sucking behaviours if
Those stalled nearby do so, and experience shows that foals may acquire the habit from their mothers
What is sham chewing
A stereotypy where jaw movements like when chewing food are performed when animal has no food in mouth
Sham chewing is often seen in
Sows kept in stalls
What is tongue rolling
A stereotypy that happens when the tongue is extruded from the mouth and moved by curling and uncurling outside or inside mouth with no solid material present
Tongue rolling includes components of the movements involved in
prehension of forage plants during grazing
tongue rolling often happens in cows kept in
Intensive conditions / no way to graze
What is licking (abnormal behaviour)
A stereotypy where the tongue is applied repeatedly to an area of the animal’s own body or to an object in the surroundings, with same patten of movement. Becomes abnormal behaviour when performed with high frequency
what is bar biting
A stereotypy in which an animal opens and closes its mouth around a bar, tether, or stall door, engaging the tongue and teeth with the surface and performing chewing movements
What is drinker pressing
A stereotypy where the animal presses an automatic drinker repeatedly without ingesting water
drinker pressing shown by
Sows kept in stalls and provided with a nipple drinker
Why do sows perform drinker pressing
Drinker is one of most interesting items in the animal’s surroundings
Abnormal behaviours in domestic animals
Domestic animals show some behaviour that is, for the most part, normal in pattern but is abnormal in respect of the object to which its directed or the extent to which it occurs
Is self mutilation an abnormal behaviour
Yes! Can be done to areas with local injury or not
self mutilation happens when animal
Has lack of stimuli, lack of control of environment, or lack of social contact
Environmental abnormal behaviours can involve
Sucking, nibbling, chewing, or eating environmental objects
coprophagia is normal / abnormal when
Normal - rabbits and common in foals, but abnormal in adult horses
Abnormal behaviours can be addressed to another animal - animals treat
Other animals, or parts of their anatomy as if they were objects to be investigated. Eg intersucking
What kind of behaviour is feather/body pecking
Abnormal behaviour
What is feather pecking/body pecking?
When hens crowded together on wire floors have few objects to peck at so they peck at other animals - their head, back, tail, ventral region, or cloaca
when does body pecking/ cannibalism arise in hens
When wounds arise on other hens
How did humans deal with feather pecking
Clip beaks - treating symptom, not cause
what is tail biting
An abnormal behaviour in which a pig takes the tail of another tail in its mouth and chews it lightly
Once tail biting starts, what happens
Tail biting attention gets more severe, with resultant wounds on the tail. The wound encourages more active tail biting and other pigs in the group begin to chew on the tail
Chronic / acute risk factor effects for tail biting
Keeping chronic risk factors for stress low makes animals more able to deal with acute stressors, and help prevent tail biting
what is intersucking
Calves separated from their dams suck and lick other calves
Where does intersucking occur
Commonly on navel, prepuce, scrotum, udder, and ears of other animals
Intersucking is more common in calves fed from _______ than ______
More common in calves fed from buckets than those fed from mother or artificial teat
What is neonatal rejection
failure of function - Active desertion or persistence of aggressive reactions by mother towards the newborn
what is maternal failure
Failed of function - Failure to supply maternal attention to newborn
Delay or a failure to groom (clean) it immediately following its birth
What is stealing of young
A failure of function - prepatruient ewes/cows often sniff, approach, or stay close to newborn and can lead to problems if mother of approached calf does not retain close contact with it because of weakness, maternal failure, or social subordination
How to prevent stealing of young
Giving enough space for dams to present their normal behaviour of separating from the group before calving
What is killing of young or maternal cannibalism
Failure of function - the most dramatic form of maternal cannibalism involves the biting, killing, and eating of newborn
Associated with Hyperexcitability
existing contact between humans and animals is
Visual, olfactory, additive, and tactile
Nature of interacting with humans for animals can be
Positive, negative, or neutral
Is it possible to infer the nature of previous experiences of animals through evaluation of general reactivity to handling?
Yes
Flight distance
The distance within which a person can approach an animal before it moves away (determined by an the animal’s flight zone)
voluntary approach test is
The distance within which an animal approaches a human in a determined time period
Composite reactivity score
How reactive the animal is to handling
flight speed
The speed at which each animal exist the chute
Animals that leave faster are considered more reactive
Preference tests
Any investigation of animals in a varied environment offers the opportunity of finding out what animals choose to do
example of preference tests
Hens pick what floor they like best
preference test require
Prior learning
preference test limitation
What animals pick is not always best for their long term health or welfare
Operant test
Behavioural indicator that indicates how much the animal is “willing to pay” for a resource
- compare the importance of different resources
Judgement bias tasks provide
A cognitive measure of optimism and pessimism
How does a judgement bias task work
-Animal first has to learn to discriminate between a stimulus that predicts a positive consequence and one that predicts a negative consequence
-Once animal has mastered this, one ambiguous stimulus is introduced
After disbudding, calves are more likely to judge an ambiguous stimulus as
Negative - pessimistic bias indicates that post operative pain following hot iron disbudding results in a negative change in emotional state
