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One of the long-term goals
of our behavior lab is to improve science-based knowledge of horse
behavior available to biologists, veterinarians, animal scientists,
horse enthusiasts, and the general public. One specific objective is to
develop and publish equid ethograms, which are annotated catalogs
describing behavior sequences and their various elements. To date we
have published two ethograms in the scientific literature, each on a
specific class of behavior. The first was on intermale agonistic
behavior among bachelor stallions (McDonnell and Haviland, 1995) and the
second on play behavior (McDonnell and Poulin, 2002). This year a book
version including all classes of behavior entitled The Equid Ethogram: A
Practical Field Guide to Horse Behavior (McDonnell, 2003) was published
for both the academic and the lay audience.
As a
companion to the book, we now are obtaining video samples of all of the
behavior entries to develop an interactive DVD. This would allow high
quality digital video clips with quality audio to be viewed for each
book entry. The DVD format has been selected because it can be played on
computers with DVD-ROM drives or on inexpensive stand-alone DVD players.
To date,
samples of almost all behaviors have been obtained, with parturition the
only remaining sequence. We hope to produce the first version ourselves.
We are currently exploring DVD development software and hardware capable
of handling the production in house.
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The semi-feral pony herd at New Bolton Center was started in 1995 with
unrelated stallions and mares. Over that period animals have lived under
natural social conditions and observations on social organization and
fertility have been recorded daily. As we approach the ten year history.
It is our goal to summarize social organization and reproductive
patterns, including reproductive maturation, reproductive success,
fertility, and paternity over the first ten-year period for comparison
with data published from a similar group of horses in France. Toward
that goal we are extracting data and organizing descriptive summaries
and comparisons and the related literature.
In this presentation
example data summarized for the first eight years of the NBC herd will
be presented and compared to the French data. In general these two
herds have extremely high, fertility and low inbreeding. The NBC has
had earlier maturation of females and higher survivability of foals.
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A goal of our
lab is to develop simple stall-side methods to assess cognitive ability
of horses. In the present study, our primary objective was to develop a
battery of four associative operant two-choice tasks representing
associative tasks common to equine training, and each using a different
sensory modality. A second objective was to compare operant learning
efficiency of geldings, stallions, and mares in these four tasks. The
visual task involved the subject learning to indicate choice by touching
the muzzle to the illuminated vs non-illuminated half of a Plexiglas
panel placed in front of the subject, which was randomly illuminated on
the left or right half. The tactile task involved learning to indicate
choice by significantly manipulating (rolling, licking, picking up, or
tossing) a frozen vs a room-temperature plastic freezer pack rod
presented in random order into the left or right of two containers
positioned in front of the subject. The auditory task involved learning
to indicate choice of direction of a door-bell ring presented in random
order to the left or right of the subject by the subject touching the
muzzle to the corresponding side of a Plexiglas panel positioned in
front of the subject. The olfactory task involved learning to indicate
choice by significant manipulation of a plastic bottle with scented vs
non-scented contents randomly presented into the left or right of two
containers positioned in front of the subject. Behavior was shaped by
following attention to or manipulation of the correct choice with a
palatable food reward (small portion of carrot, apple, sweet feed,
sweetened cereal, or cookie) and progressively delaying reward to
provoke more significant manipulation of the correct choice. Incorrect
choices were not rewarded. Eight subjects received the battery in the
order of visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory. Two subjects received
the battery in the order of olfactory, then visual, tactile, and
auditory. For each modality series, a single technician performed all
trials for all subjects.
Subjects
enrolled to date and being studied simultaneously include 4 pony
stallions, 5 pony geldings and one ovariectomized pony mare. Six of
these subjects entered the study naïve to learning trials of this type
and four (2 geldings, one stallion, and the mare) had participated in
previous tactile and/or visual 2-choice associative operant tasks of a
different type than those used here.
Measures of learning efficiency for each task included the number of
presentations to achieve significant manipulation, number of
presentations to achieve success (defined as responding significantly
above the level of chance on 20 or more successive presentations in a
single trial), number of minutes to achieve success, and the percentage
of correct responses during the trial in which success was achieved. If
subjects had not achieved success after 200 presentations the series for
the particular modality was ended.
To date, all
subjects have completed the visual and tactile series. Cursory
inspection of data so far for visual and tactile tasks suggest that
learning efficiency for individuals and gender classes may not be
consistent across modalities.
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Kana Grogan is a native of Chester County who is currently majoring in
Animal Science at the University of Delaware. She has been the
Havemeyer Summer Research Assistant since summer of 2001. In that
position she has served as the semi-feral herd manager, as the research
and clinical “gal Friday,” and as the lab photographer. She has also
conducted a number of preliminary studies, assisted with the completion
of Havemeyer summer student projects, and assisted with mentoring
projects. She has made major contributions to the ethogram book project
and is managing the video ethogram project. Recently Kana has
focused her interest and efforts on our cognition studies.
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