Feather pecking in laying hens: new insights and directions for research?
The aim of this paper is to present new insights and promising directions for future research on feather pecking in laying hens. Our starting point was a multidisciplinary research program on feather pecking in The Netherlands, in which ethological, physiological, ontogenetic and genetic approaches were combined. The four topics addressed in this paper are: (1) […]
Coping and coping strategies- a behavioural view
Coping behaviour is a response to aversive situations. Farm and laboratory animals kept in intensive housing systems use a set of strategies (escape, remove, search, wait) to cope with aversive situations. It is suggested that these strategies have been shaped by evolution as adaptations to fitness-threatening situations with which animals are confronted in their natural […]
Differences in Temperament Traits Between Crib-Biting and Control Horses
Recent studies have suggested that crib-biting in horses is associated with diminished capacity of learning or coping with stress. Such findings raise the question whether trainability, which is fundamentally important in practice, could also be affected by stereotypic behaviour. Trainability of a horse is difficult to assess in simple tests, however, it is reliably estimated […]
Behavioural and physiological responses of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to agonistic growls from conspecifics
Motivation–structural rule theory predicts that a sender producing harsh, low frequency sounds directed at a conspecific modifies the receiver’s behaviour, in part, by communicating its willingness to escalate to an attack. Motivation–structural (MS) rules generally assume that receivers respond to this signal by retreating because of the threat encoded in the acoustic characteristics of the […]