Juvenile rough-and-tumble play predicts adult sexual behaviour in American mink

Ahloy‐Dallaire, Jamie; Mason, Georgia

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.10.023

Cited by 33 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(62 reference statements)

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“…Finding this association only in the group of non-aggressive dogs implies that the social evolutionary purpose of play is a normal social behavior. The function of social play is to enable a more flexible development of future behaviors and a better socio-cognitive development [42,43] with the improvement of communication skills and social ties [44,45]. Play may thus contribute an important role in the appropriate (non-aggressive) social behavior of dogs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dogs’ Sociability, Owners’ Neuroticism and Attachment Style to Pets as Predictors of Dog Aggression

Gobbo

Zupan

2020

Animals

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A dog’s aggressive behavior is influenced by external and internal factors, including its psychological profile. In this study, dogs’ and owners’ personalities and the owners’ attachment style to their dogs were identified and associated with owner-reported dog aggression towards humans and animals. Forty Slovenian owners participated with their dogs, of different breeds and aggression history, sorted into three groups (non-aggressive dogs, dogs aggressive towards humans, and dogs aggressive towards animals). The owners filled out three separate questionnaires that assessed dog aggression history towards different targets, owner’s personality and degree of insecure attachment styles to dogs; namely anxious and avoidant attachment. Dog personality was characterized using a standardized dog mentality assessment test, during which the dog was exposed to nine tasks, performed outside, and dogs were scored based on behaviors they exhibited. The results indicated that dogs which were aggressive towards humans were less sociable than non-aggressive dogs and this was associated with the higher neuroticism scores of their owners. We also found that dogs which were aggressive towards strangers had owners with lower scores for anxious attachment and that dogs which were aggressive towards owners had owners with higher scores for avoidant attachment. These results imply that the psychological profiles of both a dog and its owner influence dog aggression towards humans.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dogs’ Sociability, Owners’ Neuroticism and Attachment Style to Pets as Predictors of Dog Aggression

Gobbo

Zupan

2020

Animals

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“…This is a core weakness of our study: it is difficult, for example, to draw strong conclusions about relationships between the play of littermates housed in different cages when there is much uncertainty about our estimates of each pair's level of play. Therefore, in an effort to increase the reliability of our observations, in our later studies of rough‐and‐tumble play in mink (Ahloy Dallaire, ), we switched from instantaneous scan sampling to one‐zero scan sampling. Future studies of locomotor play might also benefit from a more refined ethogram since our description may have captured heterogeneous activities: for instance, writhing could possibly be a form of social play solicitation, while jumping mink may just have been trying to get a bite of food (mink are fed on top of the cage, and typically climb to eat).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Play in juvenile mink: litter effects, stability over time, and motivational heterogeneity

Ahloy‐Dallaire

Mason

2016

Developmental Psychobiology

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Mink are potentially ideal for investigating the functions of play: deleterious effects of early social isolation suggest a crucial developmental role for play; and huge numbers of highly playful juvenile subjects can be studied on farms. We collected descriptive data on 186 pairs from 93 litters, half provided with play-eliciting environmental enrichment objects in their home cages, to test three hypotheses: (1) play frequency is subject to litter effects; (2) relative playfulness is stable over time; (3) play sub-types share a single, common motivational basis. We found weak litter effects that were driven by stronger litter effects on general activity, and weakly stable individual differences in both total and rough-and-tumble play. Experimentally increasing object play did not inhibit rough-and-tumble play, showing these sub-types are not motivational substitutes. Frequencies of these sub-types were also uncorrelated, and changed differently with time of day and age, further supporting this conclusion.

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“…Further it was emphasized that the complexity of social relationships was a crucial driver in the development of the primate brain 15 and that play contributes to the development of skills necessary to navigate social relationships as adults 16 . This and other increasing evidence 17–19 for the adaptive benefits of play illustrate the function of social play, which is to promote complex socio-cognitive development (e.g., play-mediated learning) and behavioural flexibility. More specifically, social play functions to strengthen affiliative ties between group members, although a recent example in primates 2 suggests it can only reduce social tension and not necessarily indicate that individuals form affiliative social relationships.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Individual play patterns stimulated by a familiar object are group-driven

Zupan

Rehn

Oliveira

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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This study investigates the dynamics of play behaviour within groups of four juvenile pigs and uses a novel clustering and statistical modelling approach to describe new details in how individuals play with a familiar object (toy rope). We examined complex state sequence data collected during a 30 min home pen play test, using the package TraMineR, where the states were defined as object play, locomotor/social play and no play. From behavioural observations, and based on the relative proportion of the different types of object play observed, each individual was later categorised as an initiator or joiner type of player. Initiators were found to be more solitary and to show more object play whereas joiners were more social and showed less object play. The majority of groups did not have an initiator type of player, yet on average they played more. Despite strong group and type of player effects, we identified three general individual play patterns. On a group level, our results demonstrate differences in how a period of playing develops, that playing with the object simultaneously occurs more often in groups than expected by chance and that the number of pigs playing together is stable over time.

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Juvenile rough-and-tumble play predicts adult sexual behaviour in American mink

Cited by 33 publications

References 60 publications

Dogs’ Sociability, Owners’ Neuroticism and Attachment Style to Pets as Predictors of Dog Aggression

Dogs’ Sociability, Owners’ Neuroticism and Attachment Style to Pets as Predictors of Dog Aggression

Play in juvenile mink: litter effects, stability over time, and motivational heterogeneity

Individual play patterns stimulated by a familiar object are group-driven

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