Quantifying animals’ perception of environmental predictability using anticipatory behavior
Animals under human care often experience predictable daily husbandry events, which can promote the development of anticipatory behavior. Previous research suggests even short delays in the arrival of a predictable, desired outcome can lead to negative welfare outcomes for animals. As such, providing reliable information to animals regarding the onset of important events may be […]
Quantifying animals’ perception of environmental predictability using anticipatory behavior
Animals under human care often experience predictable daily husbandry events, which can promote the development of anticipatory behavior. Previous research suggests even short delays in the arrival of a predictable, desired outcome can lead to negative welfare outcomes for animals. As such, providing reliable information to animals regarding the onset of important events may be […]
A Quantitative Approach for Using Anticipatory Behavior as a Graded Welfare Assessment
To perform quick assessments, welfare practitioners may focus on specific behavioral indicators of welfare, which can lead to challenges in interpretation. Anticipatory behavior has been suggested as a potentially graded indicator of well-being in animals. However, there are difficulties in assessing variations in this class of behavior quantitatively. Here, we propose an analytical approach for […]
Sequence, Syntax, and Semantics: Responses of a Language-Trained Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus) to Novel Sign Combinations
We present a sea lion’s (Zalophus californianus) responses to anomalous (unfamiliar) combinations of signs created by reordering, deleting, or adding signs. The sea lion’s responses to these anomalous combinations demonstrated that she had learned a number of syntactic relations from exposure to a limited set of standard combinatorial forms. The learned syntactic relations included two […]