How long does it take? Reliable personality assessment based on common behaviour in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)
Individual variation in behaviour has been shown to have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. Research on animal personality has therefore received considerable attention, yet some methodological issues remain unresolved. We tested whether assessing personality by coding common behaviours is as time-consuming method as some researchers believe it to be. Altogether, 300 hours of observation were collected […]
Individual variation in spontaneous problem-solving performance among wild great tits
Behavioural traits generally and cognitive traits in particular are relatively understudied in an evolutionary ecological context. One reason for this is that such traits are often difficult to characterize among large numbers of individuals, without the influence of diverse environmental effects swamping intrinsic individual differences. We conducted standardized assays on a natural population of great […]
Maternal responsiveness of outdoor sows from first to fourth parities
Sows of indoor breeds are well known to differ in the speed and strength with which they respond to a piglet trapped under their bodies. There is also evidence from two previous studies that a sow’s responsiveness to playback of a simulated trapped piglet scream is related to the number of crushed piglets in her […]
Development of approach and handling tests for the assessment of reactivity to humans of sows housed in stall or in group
The aim of the present study was to develop reliable and easy-to-use tests for on-farm assessment of sow reactivity to human in different housing systems. A total of 123 gestating sows at different parities and stages of pregnancy were successively subjected to two tests according to their housing systems: an approach (AS) test and a […]
Consistency of individual variation in feeding behaviour and its relationship with performance traits in Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus
Feed intake is commonly used as one of the most important performance indicators in fish. However, very little is known about the behavioural processes involved in ingesting food such as meal duration, feeding frequency and latency to start eating. This study aims at the characterization of feeding behaviour in Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus in terms […]
On-farm qualitative behaviour assessment in sheep: Repeated measurements across time, and association with physical indicators of flock health and welfare
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) is a ‘whole-animal’ methodology that assesses the expressive qualities of animal behaviour using terms such as ‘tense’, ‘relaxed’, ‘anxious’, and ‘content’. The reliability and validity of QBA as an indicator for on-farm welfare assessment in pigs, cattle, poultry and sheep has been examined in a number of ways. However, the use […]
Reactions of sheep towards three sets of emotional stimuli: (In)Consistency in respect to stimulus valence and sheep identity
There is an increasing interest in affective states in applied animal behaviour science, because these states are thought to reflect welfare from the perspective of the animals. Also, it can be expected that individuals differ in how they consistently react to emotional challenges. Recently, we conducted three experiments in which the same sheep were repeatedly […]