Search

Throughout their lives, dogs may experience various stressful events. Early neurological stimulation (ENS), which was shown to alter stress responses beneficially in some animals, has not been fully explored in dogs. Seventy-six small-breed puppies from one commercial breeding kennel were divided into three treatment groups: ENS, held, and control. Puppies in the ENS group received 30 s of handling exercises for 21 days after birth; puppies in the held group were simply held for the same amount of time. Puppies in the control group were managed as per normal breeder practices (i.e., routine husbandry and physical health checks). Physical health was assessed weekly, and puppies were generally healthy and clean. Behavioral responses to stranger approach and isolation tests were evaluated pre- and post-ground-transportation to a distributor. Puppies were more affiliative toward a stranger post-isolation than pre-isolation (p < 0.001), and post-transport than pre-transport (p < 0.001). At the distributor, puppies in the isolation test spent less time in exploratory locomotion (p < 0.001) and vocalized more than at the breeder’s kennel (p = 0.011). Treatment did not affect these results. Overall, the results suggest that the type of ENS used in this study may not provide the purported benefits to puppies’ stress responses in commercial breeding populations.

A chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) experienced in counting arrays of 0-7 items and trained for comprehension of number symbols, spontaneously displayed a variety of indicating acts (e.g., pointing, touching, and rearranging items) during counting. Twenty-five sessions were videotaped, and all trials were evaluated for the relations among number of items presented, number of indicating acts displayed, and the Arabic number selected to represent the array. Significant correlations included the relations between number of items and the cardinal number selected by the animal, between the number of items and indicating acts displayed by the chimpanzee, and between the number of indicating acts and the numeral selected. These data suggest that the use of indicating acts by this animal may have functional significance and serves as an organizing schema, comparable to similar behaviors observed in children in the early stages of learning to count.

Three chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were trained to discriminate among pairs of boxes in an ABCDE-ordered series. The 2nd member of each pair was reinforced, until all 4 training pairs were learned. During novel tests the nonadjacent BD pair was presented, and all 3 animals reliably selected D. In Experiment 2, numerals 1-5 served as stimuli. One chimpanzee reliably selected the larger numeral 4 during testing with a nonadjacent pair (2-4), and 2 chimps showed no preference. In a 2nd phase, the same chimp demonstrated proficiency at reversing the task, reliably selecting the smaller of the 2-4 pair. In Experiment 4, after additional training, a 2nd test, which included novel test pairs composed of numbers that had not been used during training, was completed. Two of 3 animals were 100% correct on Trial 1 for all novel pairs. The results suggest that chimpanzees with experience in number concepts may recognize the ordinal character of numbers.

Maternal factors such as fear and stress influence offspring welfare in many species, but this area of research has been underexplored in dogs. As a large proportion of society's dogs originate from commercial-breeding (CB) kennels, further investigation in this environment is crucial to ensure canine welfare. The current study aimed to refine a set of welfare metrics used to explore associations between maternal factors and litter welfare in CB kennels. Dams (n = 28) from five USDA-licensed CB kennels were tested at 6 and 1-week prepartum, and 4 and 8-weeks postpartum using a stranger approach test, physical health assessment, exposure to novel stimuli, social isolation test, hair cortisol concentration, fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM) and fecal immunoglobulin A (IgA) concentrations. Puppies (n = 138) were tested at 4 (4W) and 8-weeks (8W) old using equivalent measures. Preliminary analyses of the metrics collected during puppy social isolation revealed that locomotion was positively correlated with exploration (4W: rs=0.46, P < 0.001; 8W: rs=0.39, P < 0.001), escape attempt duration (4W: rs=0.26, P = 0.002; 8W: rs=0.31, P < 0.001), frequency of stress behaviors (4W: rs=0.22, P = 0.01; 8W: rs=0.40, P < 0.001), vocalization (4W: rs=0.18, p=0.04; 8W: rs=0.20, P = 0.02), and fecal IgA (4W: rs=0.24, P = 0.05). Stationary behavior was negatively correlated with escape attempt duration (4W: rs=-0.37, P < 0.001; 8W: rs=-0.43, P < 0.001), frequency of stress behaviors (4W: rs=-0.22, P = 0.01; 8W: rs=-0.32, P < 0.001), and physiologic metrics (4W: fecal IgA rs=-0.25, P = 0.04; 8W: FGM rs=-0.23, P = 0.01). Results suggest that, in response to social isolation, 4W and 8W old puppies exhibit one of two coping styles, proactive or passive, and the latter is associated with lower activation of the immune and stress response. The outcomes of this study will inform future research exploring maternal risk factors, including behavioral and physiologic stressors, affecting puppy developmental welfare in CB kennels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]