Housing conditions do not alter cognitive bias but affect serum cortisol, qualitative behaviour assessment and wounds on the carcass in pigs

Mood and personality interact to determine cognitive biases in pigs

Biology Letters ◽

10.1098/rsbl.2016.0402 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 12 (11) ◽

pp. 20160402 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Lucy Asher ◽

Mary Friel ◽

Kym Griffin ◽

Lisa M. Collins

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Bias ◽

Sus Scrofa ◽

Cognitive Biases ◽

Mood State ◽

Enriched Environment ◽

Housing Conditions ◽

Domestic Pig ◽

Sus Scrofa Domesticus ◽

Human Animal ◽

First Time

Cognitive bias has become a popular way to access non-human animal mood, though inconsistent results have been found. In humans, mood and personality interact to determine cognitive bias, but to date, this has not been investigated in non-human animals. Here, we demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, in a non-human animal, the domestic pig ( Sus scrofa domesticus ), that mood and personality interact, impacting on judgement. Pigs with a more proactive personality were more likely to respond optimistically to unrewarded ambiguous probes (spatially positioned between locations that were previously rewarded and unrewarded) independent of their housing (or enrichment) conditions. However, optimism/pessimism of reactive pigs in this task was affected by their housing conditions, which are likely to have influenced their mood state. Reactive pigs in the less enriched environment were more pessimistic and those in the more enriched environment, more optimistic. These results suggest that judgement in non-human animals is similar to humans, incorporating aspects of stable personality traits and more transient mood states.

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On-farm Qualitative Behaviour Assessment of dairy goats in different housing conditions

Applied Animal Behaviour Science ◽

10.1016/j.applanim.2016.04.013 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 180 ◽

pp. 51-57 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Lilia Grosso ◽

Monica Battini ◽

Françoise Wemelsfelder ◽

Sara Barbieri ◽

Michela Minero ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Housing Conditions ◽

Dairy Goats ◽

Qualitative Behaviour ◽

On Farm

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Housing conditions affect rat responses to two types of ambiguity in a reward–reward discrimination cognitive bias task

Behavioural Brain Research ◽

10.1016/j.bbr.2014.07.048 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 274 ◽

pp. 73-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Richard M.A. Parker ◽

Elizabeth S. Paul ◽

Oliver H.P. Burman ◽

William J. Browne ◽

Michael Mendl

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Bias ◽

Housing Conditions

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Behavioral Testing of Mice Concerning Anxiety and Depression

Zeitschrift für Psychologie ◽

10.1027/2151-2604/a000215 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 223 (3) ◽

pp. 151-156 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nina Schweinfurth ◽

Undine E. Lang

Keyword(s):

Environmental Influences ◽

Sickness Behavior ◽

Laboratory Research ◽

Anxiety And Depression ◽

Housing Conditions ◽

Human Beings ◽

Behavioral Testing ◽

New Developments ◽

Animal Trials ◽

Resilience Factors

Abstract. In the development of new psychiatric drugs and the exploration of their efficacy, behavioral testing in mice has always shown to be an inevitable procedure. By studying the behavior of mice, diverse pathophysiological processes leading to depression, anxiety, and sickness behavior have been revealed. Moreover, laboratory research in animals increased at least the knowledge about the involvement of a multitude of genes in anxiety and depression. However, multiple new possibilities to study human behavior have been developed recently and improved and enable a direct acquisition of human epigenetic, imaging, and neurotransmission data on psychiatric pathologies. In human beings, the high influence of environmental and resilience factors gained scientific importance during the last years as the search for key genes in the development of affective and anxiety disorders has not been successful. However, environmental influences in human beings themselves might be better understood and controllable than in mice, where environmental influences might be as complex and subtle. The increasing possibilities in clinical research and the knowledge about the complexity of environmental influences and interferences in animal trials, which had been underestimated yet, question more and more to what extent findings from laboratory animal research translate to human conditions. However, new developments in behavioral testing of mice involve the animals’ welfare and show that housing conditions of laboratory mice can be markedly improved without affecting the standardization of results.

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