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Animals are often prohibited in public areas, which limit opportunities for people to experience improvements in well-being from their presence. Visual representations of animals, such as videos, may serve as an alternative intervention to the physical presence of live animals. University students, in particular, may benefit from virtual animal-assisted interventions, given that they report high rates of stress, and opportunities to interact with live animals at tertiary institutions are generally limited. This study recruited 200 participants from introductory psychology courses through a research participant pool at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. Following exposure to a mental arithmetic stressor that was 3 minutes in length, participants were randomly assigned to watch a 3-minute video that featured either a dog, puppy, nature, or blank screen. In light of previous research that found that infantile facial features elicit greater attention and positive affect among viewers compared with mature facial features, this study hypothesized that the video of the puppy would be the most effective at enhancing wellbeing. Data were collected through the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Visual Analog Scale (VAS), and the Subjective Appraisal of Video Affects (SAVA). The results revealed that the puppy video produced significantly higher scores of happiness relative to the nature and control videos (F(8.54,557.94) = 3.29, p < 0.001, ηp2= 0.05). Additionally, participants reported that the puppy video was significantly more effective at inducing relaxation compared with the control video (F(3,199) = 7.58, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.10). These results suggest that watching a video of a puppy can be useful to improve wellbeing among university students. This study offers novel contributions to the limited literature examining the impact of visual representations of infant animals on stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the importance of secure relationships between children and caregivers has been well established in the literature as an essential feature of healthy child development, the influence of animal-human relationships on healthy development and attachment is also beginning to gain attention. A burgeoning literature supports the developmental and sustainability benefits of such relationships to children. One hundred seventeen directors of childcare centres in Manitoba, Canada (16.5%) caring for 24% of children in licensed care responded to a survey about animals in childcare facilities. Findings showed that only 51% of facilities currently had animals, with fish and caged rodents being the most common. Although centre directors agreed that the benefits of centre-based animals included children learning responsibility as well as increased calmness and happiness in children, the drawbacks in terms of children's allergies, the costs, and the inconvenience outweighed these benefits in almost half the centres. Given the benefits of animals in young children's lives, a list of variables for consideration is provided to aid directors in decision-making about animals in childcare centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study investigates differences in the δ13Ccol, δ15N, δ13Csc, δ18Osc, Sr/Ca, and Ba/Ca values of juvenile and adult woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) from Old Crow, Yukon, Canada. The data indicate that nursing in woolly mammoths lasted at least three years, and was associated with minimal decreases in δ13Ccol (~0.2‰), large decreases in δ13Csc (~1.5‰), and large increases in δ15N (~2‰) and δ18Osc (~2‰) values. Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca ratios suggest that woolly mammoth juveniles began consuming plant foods between 2 and 3 “African Elephant Years” of age, much later than the initiation of weaning in modern elephants. We hypothesize that delayed weaning was an adaptation to increased predation risk and decreased food quality/quantity during the extended hours of darkness that occur in winter at high latitudes. Prolonged nursing and delayed weaning may have made mammoths particularly vulnerable to climatic stressors or human hunting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent birds feeding young are faced with a trade-off between allocating time and allocating energy to many variables, all of which will influence fitness to some degree. Here I use a novel experimental approach to determine the importance of nest sanitation and nest provisioning as components of reproductive effort in female barn swallows (Hirundo rustica L., 1758) feeding nestlings aged 11–15 days. Female birds were warmed overnight to allow extra energy at dawn and the short-term consequences for reproductive behaviour were determined upon release. Faecal sac removal rates were significantly positively related to nest visitation rates and warmed females showed a nonsignificant trend towards elevated sanitation behaviour. Females also showed a highly significant increase in nest visitation rates in response to the warming treatment compared with the controls. Precipitation had a significant negative effect on provisioning behaviour across all treatments. Nestling swallows were observed ejecting faecal sacs from the nest without parental help, and this precipitated a very low rate of faecal sac removal. The results suggest that nest sanitation may be an opportunistic behaviour in swallows and that it may not be an important component of reproductive effort in birds with older nestlings. The results also suggest a trade-off between nest sanitation and nest provisioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]