Talking to Cows: Reactions to Different Auditory Stimuli During Gentle Human-Animal Interactions.

ABSTRACT: The quality of the animal-human relationship and, consequently, the welfare of animals can be improved by gentle interactions such as stroking and talking. The perception of different stimuli during these interactions likely plays a key role in their emotional experience, but studies are scarce. During experiments, the standardization of verbal stimuli could be increased by using a recording. However, the use of a playback might influence the perception differently than "live" talking, which is closer to on-farm practice. Thus, we compared heifers' (n = 28) reactions to stroking while an experimenter was talking soothingly ("live") or while a recording of the experimenter talking soothingly was played ("playback"). Each animal was tested three times per condition and each trial comp

SUBMITTER: Lange A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7593841 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature