Battery hens name their price: Consumer demand theory and the measurement of ethological ‘needs’

Dawkins, Marian Stamp

doi:10.1016/s0003-3472(83)80026-8

Cited by 368 publications

(162 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The weight at which each mouse failed to enter the ENR cage for 48 h was deemed its 'maximum price paid'. This maximum price was used to infer each mouse's level of motivation for enrichment [7,28,46]: essentially a 'break-point' measure, but assessed over a longer time period than as typically utilized in conventional operant set-ups (cf. e.g.…”

Section: Transfer To Non-enriched Standard Conditions and Subsequentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We then increased the weight daily and recorded the number of visits to the food cage each day until the mice did not enter the food cage for 24 h. The aim of this final phase was to use food as a benchmark resource (e.g. [7]), to estimate the maximum weight each mouse was able to push. Controlling for this should ideally help reduce variation in the maximum price for enrichments that merely reflected individual differences in physical strength.…”

Section: Transfer To Non-enriched Standard Conditions and Subsequentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Frustration and perseveration in stereotypic captive animals: Is a taste of enrichment worse than none at all?

Latham

Mason

2010

Behavioural Brain Research

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a b s t r a c tStereotypic behaviours are common in animals in impoverished housing, arising from two complementary processes: (1) thwarted attempts to perform motivated behaviours; (2) forebrain dysfunction impeding normal behavioural inhibition. When enriched animals are moved to impoverished housing, they are sometimes protected against developing stereotypic behaviour, but in other cases become even more stereotypic than animals housed lifelong without enrichment. Negative contrast-induced frustration must occur in both scenarios. We hypothesise that sustained behavioural responses to this frustration are prevented in the former by normalised forebrain function, but exacerbated in the latter by forebrain dysfunction. ICRCD-1 mice reared in enriched or standard cages were re-caged at 3 months to standard conditions. Here, previously-enriched mice became far more stereotypic than mice reared from birth in such conditions. To investigate the role of frustration, we assessed both corticosterone output and motivation (break-point) to regain enrichments. We also assessed perseveration via extinction learning. As predicted, previously-enriched mice were as perseverative as standard-raised mice, and frustration seemed to play a causal role in their exacerbated stereotypic behaviour. Previously-enriched mice showed higher motivations to access enrichments, and only in this group did these correlate with corticosterone levels after re-caging; furthermore only in previously-enriched mice did corticosterone responses to re-caging predict stereotypic behaviour 30 days later (males only). All results need replicating and further investigation. However, they suggest for the first time that individual risk factors related to the HPA axis predict stereotypic behaviour following enrichment-removal, and that previously-enriched mice have lasting motivational differences from standard-raised mice, suggesting sustained behavioural effects related to the frustration of enrichment-loss.

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Section: Transfer To Non-enriched Standard Conditions and Subsequentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Transfer To Non-enriched Standard Conditions and Subsequentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frustration and perseveration in stereotypic captive animals: Is a taste of enrichment worse than none at all?

Latham

Mason

2010

Behavioural Brain Research

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“…Dawkins, 1980Dawkins, , 1983Poole, 1992;Veasey et al, 1996Price, 1999 who concluded that it would be inappropriate to assume captive animals would require the same elements in their environment as their wild conspecifics.…”

Section: Behavioural Needs: Definitions Concepts and Some Characterimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Methods to assess the animal's appraisal of its situation are: (i) assessing the price the animal is willing to pay for access as addressed by consumer-demand studies (e.g. Dawkins, 1983;Mason et al, , 1999Mason, 1997, 2000) and ( Theoretically, anticipatory behaviour preceding an incentive can be induced without previous experience of swimming water. Thus, this method can be applied to assess and compare the sensitivity of the reward system of mink in the presence, absence and after deprivation of a swimming bath, and so, may give some insight into the effects of experience on swimming motivation ("can you miss what you do not know?").…”

Section: Stereotypies In the Presence And Absence Of A Water Bathmentioning

confidence: 99%

To swim or not to swim: An interpretation of farmed mink's motivation for a water bath

Vinke

Hansen

Mononen

et al. 2008

Applied Animal Behaviour Science

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SummaryHow an animal's behavioural (ethological) needs can be met is a pivotal issue in the assessment of welfare for captive animals. The value of swimming water for farmed mink is an example how scientific and societal questions relating to animal welfare can be answered. A number of studies have addressed the issue of the indispensability of swimming water for mink; however, so far with inconclusive evidence. In this paper, the results of these studies and related literature are reviewed.First, the biological definition of need is discussed. Subsequently, attention is paid to the effects of the presence, absence and the removal of swimming water on behavioural and physiological correlates of well-being including stereotypic and anticipatory behaviour and urinary cortisol.Thereafter we discuss individual differences in the use of swimming water, the price animals pay for access to a water bath, and the effect of access to swimming water on juvenile play.The main conclusions of the literature review are that 1) the use of a water bath for mink is most likely related to foraging behaviour (foraging areas: land and water); 2) absence of swimming water, without prior experience, does not lead to consistent changes in level of stereotypic behaviour, or anticipatory responses; 3) removal of a previously experienced water bath may induce short-term stress as indicated by behavioural parameters and elevated cortisol responses; 4) mink work hard for access to a swimming bath and running wheel in consumer demand studies. Other cage modifications such as tunnels and biting objects, may also provide environmental enrichment, if they are added to otherwise impoverished conditions; 5) There are individual differences in the use of swimming water: these are related in part to variation in prior experience of aquatic resources.; 6) As prior experience is important both with respect to individual use of swimming water and the response to deprivation, swimming water can not be described as biological need in the sense of a fixed requirement for survival. As swimming water appears to act as an incentive that induces its own motivation a more accurate term may be an "incentive induced or environmentally facilitated need". Given the available evidence, it is not possible to conclude whether mink that have never experienced swimming water, suffer as a consequence of its absence. However, it is possible to predict that mink with access to water have improved quality of life, due to increased behavioural opportunities, in comparison to farmed mink without access to swimming water. In practical terms, it is still open to debate whether mink should be provided with swimming water, or if alternative, less valued, but easier to install and maintain forms of environmental enrichment, should be provided in mink housing.To clarify these issues a number of future studies would be valuable. These include; 1) whether specific environmental cues affect motivation to swim, such as the form of drinking water delivery systems ; 2) whether prior ex...

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“…Preference tests have thus often been used to reveal what animals choose for improved well-being. For example, chickens prefer larger cages with a substrate to smaller cages with wire floors [Dawkins, 1983], while naturally semi-aquatic American mink will push door-weights as heavy as those they will push to gain food, to reach water in which they can swim and ''head-dip'' [Mason et al, 2001]. Negative stimuli can be evaluated too; for example, the avoidance of potentially noxious gasses can be assessed [Cooper et al, 1998;Jones et al, 2003], while the aversiveness of pain to lame poultry has been revealed by their selection of food dosed with analgesics over unadulterated food [e.g., Danbury et al, 2000].…”

Section: Preference and Avoidancementioning

confidence: 99%

How should the psychological well‐being of zoo elephants be objectively investigated?

2010

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Animal welfare (sometimes termed ''well-being'') is about feelings -states such as ''suffering'' or ''contentment'' that we can infer but cannot measure directly. Welfare indices have been developed from two main sources: studies of suffering humans, and of research animals deliberately subjected to challenges known to affect emotional state. We briefly review the resulting indices here, and discuss how well they are understood for elephants, since objective welfare assessment should play a central role in evidence-based elephant management. We cover behavioral and cognitive responses (approach/avoidance; intention, redirected and displacement activities; vigilance/startle; warning signals; cognitive biases, apathy and depression-like changes; stereotypic behavior); physiological responses (sympathetic responses; corticosteroid output -often assayed noninvasively via urine, feces or even hair; other aspects of HPA function, e.g. adrenal hypertrophy); and the potential negative effects of prolonged stress on reproduction (e.g. reduced gametogenesis; low libido; elevated still-birth rates; poor maternal care) and health (e.g. poor wound-healing; enhanced disease rates; shortened lifespans). The best validated, most used welfare indices for elephants are corticosteroid outputs and stereotypic behavior. Indices suggested as valid, partially validated, and/or validated but not yet applied within zoos include: measures of preference/avoidance; displacement movements; vocal/postural signals of affective (emotional) state; startle/vigilance; apathy; salivary and urinary epinephrine; female acyclity; infant mortality rates; skin/foot infections; cardio-vascular disease; and premature adult death. Potentially useful indices that have not yet attracted any validation work in elephants include: operant responding and place preference tests; intention and vacuum movements; fear/ stress pheromone release; cognitive biases; heart rate, pupil dilation and blood pressure; corticosteroid assay from hair, especially tail-hairs (to access endocrine events up to a year ago); adrenal hypertrophy; male infertility; prolactinemia; and immunological changes. Zoo Biol 29:237-255,

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Battery hens name their price: Consumer demand theory and the measurement of ethological ‘needs’

Cited by 368 publications

References 29 publications

Frustration and perseveration in stereotypic captive animals: Is a taste of enrichment worse than none at all?

Frustration and perseveration in stereotypic captive animals: Is a taste of enrichment worse than none at all?

To swim or not to swim: An interpretation of farmed mink's motivation for a water bath

How should the psychological well‐being of zoo elephants be objectively investigated?

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