Lecture 9

Question 1

What are the five freedoms in animal welfare?

Answer 1

1) the animal is free from hunger, thirst and malnutrition, because it has ready access to drinking water and a suitable diet
2) the animal is free from physical and thermal discomfort, because it has access to shelter from the elements and a comfortable resting area
3) the animal is free from pain, injury and disease, thanks to suitable prevention and/ or rapid diagnosis and treatment
4) the animal is able to express most of its normal behavioural patterns, because it has sufficient space, proper facilities and the company of other animals of its kind
5) the animal does not experience fear or distress, because the conditions needed to prevent mental suffering have been ensured

Question 2

What should be the principal method used to assess welfare of animals?

Answer 2

Observations of animal behaviour

Question 3

Give an example of animal behaviours you can observe to assess welfare

Answer 3

Using animal vocalisations as assess “want”

Question 4

What is the issue with using vocalisations to assess animal welfare?

Answer 4

Don’t have to be honest so it is difficult to assess whether the animal has what it wants because you have to determine whether or not it is doing honest signalling

Question 5

What are the two questions in the ‘two question approach’ for assessing animal welfare?

Answer 5

1) are the animals healthy? (Can test this through various physiological tests)
2) do they have what they want?

Question 6

Who came up with the ‘two question approach ‘ for assessing animal welfare?

Answer 6

Marian Dawkins

Question 7

What are the three purposes of fish rearing?

Answer 7

. Human food
. Ornamental/ human pet
. Release into nature e.g. conservation

Question 8

What are the desirable personality traits of the fish reared for the purpose of human food and why?

Answer 8

. Bold but not aggressive

. Eat voraciously and grow quickly. Minimises aggressive conspecific interactions

Question 9

What are the measures taken to obtain the desirable trait in fish reared for human food? (Bold but non-aggressive)

Answer 9

. Select strain without bold-aggressive syndrome
. Aquarium enrichment to minimise aggression
(. So, you select these and if you are unable to do that or only able to do that partly then you can minimise that aggression by enriching the area in which they are living)

Question 10

What are the desirable personality traits for fish reared for the purpose of being ornamental/ human pet and why?

Answer 10

. Bold and moderately aggressive

. “Interesting behaviour”

Question 11

What are the measures needed to obtain desirable personality traits in fish reared for ornamental/ human pets? (Bold and moderately aggressive)

Answer 11

Select strain with bold-aggressive syndrome is ok

Question 12

What are the desirable personality traits for fish reared for release into nature e.g. conservation and why?

Answer 12

. A range of personality traits
. Can cope with a range of natural environments (because the environment they move too will be very variable because in a natural environment they don’t just live in one environment. So you want a range that can cope with the ranges in environment)

Question 13

What are the measures that need to be taken for the desirable personality traits of fish reared for the purpose of release into nature e.g. conservation?

Answer 13

1) select strain with a variety of personality traits
2) maintain a variety of cultural conditions (to maintain the range personality traits) e.g. variable reward feeders, temporally variable feeders, so feeders will reward the ones that are bold and shy and they can avoid each other as well to get rid of aggressive behaviour)

Question 14

Personality overlaps with animal welfare quite a bit, especially in fish. Why is this?

Answer 14

Because fish tend to be kept in very high density for economic reasons

Question 15

Since fish tend to be kept in very high density for economic reasons it means there is personality overlap with animal welfare. So, what does this mean you have to consider and why might this be?

Answer 15

Have to consider their well being because you want nice fat fish that grow rapidly even if only for economic reasons

Question 16

What is the main way to measure the personality of dairy cows?

Answer 16

By using stressful behavioural tests

Question 17

Why is using stressful behavioural tests on dairy cows useful?

Answer 17

Because some cows will be more timid and they will produce less milk, so you want a population of cows that are not fearful. Bold ones won’t be fearful if farmers approach them but the timid ones will

Question 18

MacKay wondered if it would be possible to infer personality type just by normal behaviours that cows show rather than using behavioural tests. How did he experiment this?

Answer 18

79 cows were fitted with activity monitors and allowed to interact with (non-stressful robot milkers) for 40 days and used two types of behavioural tests

Question 19

What were the two types of behavioural tests used by MacKay to measure fearfulness/ the personality composition of dairy cows?

Answer 19

. novel arena novel object (NANO)

. Human approach test (HAP)

Question 20

What were the results of MacKay’s novel arena novel object (NANO) test on dairy cows measuring fearfulness?

Answer 20

They found that the fearless cows, according to this NANO test were younger and showed fewer lying bouts per day and less variation in lying bouts duration and fearless heart tests

Question 21

What the results of Mackay’s human approach test (HAP) tests on dairy cows measuring fearfulness?

Answer 21

. Fewer lying bouts per day

. Short average standing bout duration and presented themselves to the robot milker more often

Question 22

What can be concluded from MacKay’s behavioural tests on dairy cows? (Does it work, why is it a positive)

Answer 22

Fearfulness can be inferred from non-invasive, automated behaviour in the normal resting environment.
So can get the personality composition of your herd simply by very simple, passive behaviours that these cows show very significantly between individuals. They correlate with the personality types and so farmers can accommodate their behaviour, so they should be able to maximise milk production and the cows should be happy

Question 23

After a questionnaire was sent to zookeepers at 19 zoos to rate various aspects (14 behaviours) of their black rhinoceros behaviour what did the results show?

Answer 23

They want to maximise the births/ birth rate in zoos (endangered so important).
Found very dominant females that mate with weak males tend to do really well and weak females that mate with very dominant males seem to do very bad. So personality research shows you should breed dominant females with shy males to give max number of births. Strong correlation of this.
Has also been shown that females that do a lot of chasing/ stereotypy/ mouthing have poorer reproductive performance

Question 24

Using personality is quite important in conservation and zoo keeping such as with the black rhinoceros (endangered species). Females that spent more time chasing/ stereotypy/ mouthing have poorer reproductive performance. What does this probably indicate? What does this allow?

Answer 24

Lack of oestrus

Allows zoo keepers to just look casually and work out what kind of reproductive state the female is in

Question 25

In France where are semi-feral horses roaming free that have blood sucking flies. They went 5 times in the year and looked at the composition of groups. What did they find (group size)?

Answer 25

They found that because of the dilution affect and the confusion effect that the large groups should have fewer flies

Question 26

What happens if you have a group size less than 5 sheep?

Answer 26

They graze less and become unhappy and get nervous

Question 27

What is probably the reason that when in a group size of less than 5 sheep they begin to graze less and become unhappy and get nervous?

Answer 27

Because of there not this confusion and dilution effect so they are aware that they are vulnerable to predation. So will be looking around for predators much more. So increasing the group size reduces fearfulness and increasing time available for grazing and resting.
(When you have about 5 it doesn’t make much different if you have more)

Question 28

Why is there an optimal group size for sheep?

Answer 28

. Less than 5 get are unhappy and nervous and don’t feed properly
. 5 or more then they are fine and adding more individuals makes little difference
. If the group gets too big then you will see an increase in aggressive interactions
(However this can vary due to varying quality of the grass they are feeding on)
(Difficult to generalise on how group size will impact farm animals)

Question 29

What is the issue with non honest signalling in farm animals?

Answer 29

Because you don’t want to be giving them resources they don’t need, or giving them stuff the don’t want, or not enough

Question 30

Give an example of an animal that shows honest signalling

Answer 30

Domestic piglets

Question 31

How was it experimented/ shown that piglets signal honesty?

Answer 31

. They picked thriving and non-thriving piglets because they vary in how much they grow. The non-thriving piglets vocalised more that suggests honest signalling
. Another one where they restricted food to one group and not the other. The group without food vocalised more to the mother so that is honest signalling (controlled because in the exact same conditions)
So can use the vocalisations to determine if they are happy

Question 32

Why is honesty of vocalisations important?

Answer 32

Because vocalisations are proposed as an indicator of animal “need” or “want”

Question 33

What happens in farms where the mother is in an enclosure and the piglets are suckling from a separate one so the mother has no choice but to let them keep suckling?

Answer 33

. Mothers can not discourage young from suckling
. Mothers keep producing milk beyond the ‘normal’ period
. Mothers lose a lot of weight
. Mother experience a delayed return of oestrus
. Constrained mothers show a peak in stress hormone cortisol around preferred weaning time