Dataset Information

Exclusion performance in dwarf goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) and sheep (Ovis orientalis aries).

ABSTRACT: Using a comparative approach, we investigated the ability of dwarf goats and sheep to use direct and indirect information about the location of a food reward in an object-choice task. Subjects had to choose between two cups with only one covering a reward. Before making a choice, subjects received information about the baited (direct information) or non-baited cup (indirect information). Both goats and sheep were able to use direct information (presence of food) in the object choice task. After controlling for local enhancement, we found that goats rather than sheep were able to use indirect information (i.e., the absence of food) to find a reward. The actual test setup could not clarify whether individual goats were able to inferentially reason about the content of the baited cup when only shown the content of the non-baited cup or if they simply avoided the empty cup in that situation. As browsing species, feral and wild goats exhibit highly selective feeding behaviour compared to the rather unselective grazing sheep. The potential influence of this species-specific foraging flexibility of goats and sheep for using direct and indirect information to find a food reward is discussed in relation to a higher aversion to losses in food acquisition in goats compared to sheep.

SUBMITTER: Nawroth C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3973590 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Exclusion performance in dwarf goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) and sheep (Ovis orientalis aries).

Nawroth Christian C von Borell Eberhard E Langbein Jan J

PloS one 20140402 4

Using a comparative approach, we investigated the ability of dwarf goats and sheep to use direct and indirect information about the location of a food reward in an object-choice task. Subjects had to choose between two cups with only one covering a reward. Before making a choice, subjects received information about the baited (direct information) or non-baited cup (indirect information). Both goats and sheep were able to use direct information (presence of food) in the object choice task. After ...[more]

PMID: 24695781

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Project description:Motor self-regulation is the ability to inhibit a prepotent response to a salient cue in favour of a more appropriate response. Motor self-regulation is an important component of the processes that interact to generate effective inhibitory control of behaviour, and is theorized to be a prerequisite of complex cognitive abilities in humans and other animals. In a large comparative study using the cylinder task, motor self-regulation was studied in 36 different species, mostly birds and primates. To broaden the range of species to comprehensively evaluate this phenomenon, motor self-regulation was studied in the domestic goat, which is a social ungulate species and moderate food specialist. Using the cylinder task, goats were first trained to perform a detour-reaching response to retrieve a reward from an opaque cylinder. Subsequently, an otherwise identical transparent cylinder was substituted for the opaque cylinder over 10 test trials. The goats' ability to resist approaching the visible reward directly by touching the cylinder and to retain the trained detour-reaching response was measured. The results indicated that goats showed motor self-regulation at a level comparable to or better than that of many of the bird and mammal species tested to date. However, the individual reaction patterns revealed large intra- and inter-individual variability regarding motor self-regulation. An improvement across trials was observed only in latency to make contact with the reward; no improvement in the proportion of accurate trials was observed. A short, distinct pointing gesture by the experimenter during baiting did not have any impact on the side of the cylinder to which the goats detoured. In half of goats, individual side biases were observed when detouring to the side of the cylinder, but there was no bias at the population level for either the left or right side. The results underline the need for a detailed examination of individual performance and additional measures to achieve a complete understanding of animal performance in motor self-regulation tasks.

Project description:A wide range of species exhibit time- and context-consistent interindividual variation in a number of specific behaviors related to an individual's personality. Several studies have shown that individual differences in personality-associated behavioral traits have an impact on cognitive abilities. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality traits and learning abilities in dwarf goats. The behavior of 95 goats during a repeated open field (OF) and novel object test (NO) was analyzed, and two main components were identified using principal component analysis: boldness and activity. In parallel, the goats learned a 4-choice visual initial discrimination task (ID) and three subsequent reversal learning (RL) tasks. The number of animals that reached the learning criterion and the number of trials needed (TTC) in each task were calculated. Our results show that goats with the lowest learning performance in ID needed more TTC in RL1 and reached the learning criterion less frequently in RL2 and RL3 compared to animals with better learning performance in ID. This suggests a close relationship between initial learning and flexibility in learning behavior. To study the link between personality and learning, we conducted two analyses, one using only data from the first OF- and NO-test (momentary personality traits), while the other included both tests integrating only animals that were stable for their specific trait (stable personality traits). No relationship between personality and learning was found using data from only the first OF- and NO-test. However, stability in the trait boldness was found to have an effect on learning. Unbold goats outperformed bold goats in RL1. This finding supports the general hypothesis that bold animals tend to develop routines and show less flexibility in the context of learning than unbold individuals. Understanding how individual personality traits can affect cognitive abilities will help us gain insight into mechanisms that can constrain cognitive processing and adaptive behavioral responses.

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Dataset Information

Exclusion performance in dwarf goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) and sheep (Ovis orientalis aries).

Publications

Exclusion performance in dwarf goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) and sheep (Ovis orientalis aries).

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