What are some examples of different behavioural tests?
- Response to environmental challenge - ‘Challenge Tests’
- Aggression
- General fearfulness
- Fearfulness towards humans
What is response to environmental challenges?
- Social isolation - do they excape, vocalize?
- Handling - calm, fearful?
- Novel object - active, passive?
- Food competition - aggression, dominance?
- Social competition - aggression, dominance
What is the open door test?
- Willingness to exit pen
- Which animal exits first
- Active/bold - exit first
- Passive/shy - slow to exit
What is the Novel Object Test?
- Willingness to approach a novel object
- Tested in isolation or group setting
- Active/bold - rapid contact, short duration
- Passive/shy - slower to contact, longer duration
What is an aggression test and explain it.
Resident-intruder test
* assess individual propensity to attack
* Procedure:
- test conducted in pen
- encounters between a resident and intruder
- intruder is unfamiliar, sbmaller
- after initial attack, the test is over
- Measure: attack latency
- short latency: high aggressive
- Long latency: low aggressive
What is the open-field test and tonic immobility?
- Rodents put in open box, active animals don’t defecate as fast as passive, animal’s movement (ambulation score stays along wall =shy), position scores
- In poultry, freeze response, fearful birds: longer to move, less active, fewer distress calls (out on back and let go once they stop moving and see how long it take to start moving again
- Novel object test
Fear tests
How to test fearfulness towards humans?
- Tonic immobility in poultry
- Avoidance distance test (how many animals in a 1m radius around you)
- Approach tests
- responce to observer (how many animals move away from you)
- Flight distance (how fearful they are)
What are some problems with interpreting factor analysis?
- “correlation does not equal causation”
- just because variables are correlated does not mean they are related or inter-dependent
What types of personality tests have been done on horses?
Emotionality:
* Arena test (social separation testing)
* Novel object test (fear)
* Bridge test (fear)
Learning and memory:
* Chest test - latency to open (treat put in)
What did the results determine about personality in horses?
Both breed and type of work affected behaviour, emotionality and learning
What are the four key canine motivations that are similar in all dog breeds?
- Play-drive
- Hunt-drive
- Prey-drive
- Pack-drive
similarity across breeds suggest that basic personality traits have been conserved in dogs
tested playful, curiosity, chase, social, aggression
Who had the higher score for temperament (more excitable): B. indicus or B. taurus?
temperment assesed by chute scores
B. indicus
Who had the higher score for temperament (more excitable): steers or heifers and why??
Heifers
they have different tasks to preform and probably the lack of testosterone in the males
True or false: calm animals had higher gains.
True (approximatly 10%)
What do hair whorls indicate in cattle and who discovered it?
If hair whorls are lower, animal is more calm
more whorls = more aggressive
suggests calm temperment is genetic
Temple Grandin
What is an easy way to reduce fear response in cattle?
Using feed rewards
What are two examples of ways animals personality adapts?
- Social learning - fear response: if you are young and see elders being scared of something, you will socially learn that you should be scared of that thing
- Winning or losing a fight: if you lose a fight, you’ll learn you’re not good at fighting
Will fish change their behaviour based on watching other fish?
Shy watching shy: approached the object more quickly
Bold watching Shy: approached the object more slowly
Bold/Bold and Shy/Bold: no change
Fish showed social learning
If you’re watching an animal with the same strategy as you, you might change up your strategy. However, with bold/bold they are less flexible at changing their strategies compared to shys
What happens when you group active and passive pigs?
- Used back test to determoine if active or passive
- Passive + passive = high aggression at start decreased over time and had least aggression.
- passive + active = least aggression in beginning and didnt decrease as much as the others over time
- active + active = low aggression over time
What happened with the winner and loser bold and shy fish?
- Bold-win and shy-win = more aggression than losers
- Bold-win and bold-lose- no change
- Shy-win and shy-lose = approached faster
Shy fish became bolder regardless of treatment
What can understanding individual differences do?
- help in daily management
- improve our understanding of behaviour and learning
- improve science by reducing variation (false negatives)
What are behavioural traits influenced by?
Genetics and management
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