Temporal association between food distribution and human caregiver presence and the development of affinity to humans in lambs

Abstract

The presence of the caregiver around feeding favors the development of a human-animal relationship. To understand the underlying mechanism, we tested various temporal associations between food distribution and human presence: from an early age, a person was repeatedly present for 2 min just before milk distribution ("Forward"), during milk distribution ("Simultaneous"), and 20 min afterwards ("Delayed"). The "Control" group received no human contacts. During the treatments, "Forward" and "Delayed" lambs had more physical contacts with the person than "Simultaneous" lambs. When tested in unfamiliar environments, they stood longer near the person than did "Control" or "Simultaneous" lambs, which did not differ. Only "Forward" and "Delayed" lambs bleated when separated from the person. Fasting before testing had no effect. "Forward" and "Delayed" seemed to produce the same human-animal relationship, showing that this did not rely only on a conditioning process associating the caregiver with food. The caregiver may acquire properties for social support through other mechanisms (attachment and/or postingestive effects).

Positive human contact on the first day of life alters the piglet's behavioural response to humans and husbandry practices

“…Pigs fed in the presence of the experimenter and positively handled were quicker to closely approach and spent more time near the experimenter in a human approach test than female pigs that were fed in visual isolation of humans and either positively handled or not [20]. Similar evidence is available in other farm animal species (for example, cattle: Jago et al [33]; sheep: Boivin et al [13]; Tallet et al [14]). …”

“…Waiblinger et al [16] found that previous handling of dairy cows in the form of talking, feeding and stroking reduced heart rates, kicking and restless behaviour in both the presence of humans and during rectal palpation. Furthermore, previous positive handling has been shown to improve ease of handling and reduce heart rates during loading of calves for transport in comparison to minimal human contact around feeding [10,11], reduce vocalizations in unfamiliar environments in the presence of humans [13,14] and reduce heart rates and salivary cortisol concentrations in lambs following tail docking [15]. While handled boars had lower basal total and free plasma cortisol concentrations at 7 months of age, Weaver et al [35] found no effects of handling young male pigs on the cortisol response to a nose-snare stressor at 7 months of age.…”

“…Indeed, there are limited data indicating that positive emotional experiences in the presence of humans may ameliorate aversive situations for animals when in the presence of humans. For example, previous positive handling may improve ease of handling and reduce heart rates during loading of calves for transport [11,12], reduce vocalizations in unfamiliar environments in the presence of humans [13,14], reduce heart rate and salivary cortisol concentrations in lambs following tail docking [15], and reduce heart rates, kicking and restless behaviour in dairy cows during rectal palpation [16].…”

Efficiency to reach age of puberty and behaviour of buffalo heifers (Bubalus bubalis) kept on pasture or in confinement

“…Previous studies showed that farm animals can associate humans with positive events (e.g. Tallet et al, 2008). Therefore, it can be hypothesised that in free-ranging conditions people were seen as part of an environment, which was positively perceived by buffaloes, thus allowing the establishment of a better human-animal relationship.…”

Training Reduces Stress in Human-Socialised Wolves to the Same Degree as in Dogs

“…Positive human-animal interactions, understood as mutual and dynamic interactions between human beings and animals that have a relaxing effect on animals [24], have been recommended to improve the welfare of captive animals, domesticated or wild. It has been shown that interactions with human beings, in some situations, have the potential to reduce abnormal/stereotypic behavioural patterns and increase the duration of affiliative behaviours with group members [25–28], reduce GC concentrations [29–30], and support the expression of species-typical behaviours [31]. However, other studies have described potential negative effects of intense contact with human beings on the welfare of some mammals [25, 32–38].…”