(Don’t fear) The Rattling: Crested Porcupines Acoustic Repertoire with a Focus on Social Recognition
Virginia Schianini
African crested porcupines (Hystrix cristata) are large, nocturnal, monogamous rodents that, like other members of the Hystricidae family, have their bodies covered in long quills that they can raise and attack with if threatened. However, unique to all but one species of this family is the presence of modified quills clustered only on their tail. These rattle quills have an enlarged, hollow portion open at one end. These quills vibrate on certain occasions, and their shape allows the production of a characteristic sound called rattling. This sound is a part of the defence display of crested porcupines. Apart from rattling, vocalisations (i.e. snorts and growls) emitted by African crested porcupines have been rarely mentioned in the literature. To our knowledge, no systematic description of their acoustic repertoire exists, nor is any study on their role in communication. We gathered sounds and vocalisations emitted by 13 captive individuals by recording their spontaneous behaviour with the aims to provide a complete description of vocal and non-vocal sounds emitted by African crested porcupines, and investigate whether and how these sounds have a role in social recognition. African crested porcupines are social rodents living in family groups, and as in other social species of mammals, recognition abilities are crucial for regulating interactions between conspecifics. Since they also possess unique adaptations for sound production, this species could represent an exciting model, among rodents, for studying acoustic communication.
HOW DO DOLPHINS SIGNAL THEIR MOTIVATION TO PLAY?
Federica Vantaggio
Play is a widespread behaviour across mammals. This peculiar behaviour is often punctuated by specific strategies that animals adopt to communicate their playful motivation to others. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are marine mammals that show a high propensity to play at every age. For this reason, this species is an excellent model to study communication during play. Due to the difficulty of gathering data in the wild and management needs in the controlled environments, many aspects of dolphin behaviour remain challenging. Here, we investigated the playful contexts during which two different visual displays are emitted (the open mouth and the production of bubbles) in a group of 11 bottlenose dolphins (6 males, 5 females) hosted at Zoomarine, Rome, Italy. The overarching aim of this study was to evaluate the possible communicative roles of these two visual patterns. Via frame-by-frame video analysis, we extracted 1218 play sessions (303 intraspecific sessions, 361 interspecific sessions, 52 locomotor/acrobatic solitary sessions, and 502 object play solitary sessions). A total of 1132 open mouth events (from 9 subjects) and 835 bubble events (from 11 subjects) were recorded. We found that these two visual displays were emitted under different playful contexts. The open mouth was rarely emitted during solitary play and tended to increase during social play, reaching its maximum during intraspecific play. This finding indicates the interactive nature of this facial display that strongly recalls the results obtained for the play face in primates and social carnivores. A different result was found for the production of bubbles whose frequency peaked during solitary play and tended to decrease under social situations, indicating that this display might not have an immediate and interactive communicative function.
An ethological approach to mother-child interaction paradigm: a snapshot of the socio-emotional development in three-months old infants
Chiara Scopa
Environmental factors, including perinatal exposures to chemicals in water, air and food as well as the quality of parental bonding might unsettle human normal development. Prenatal or neonatal life stages are characterized by elevated sensitivity to any inputs and elements which can permanently affect a tissue/organ growth. The Life MILCH Project is a longitudinal study aiming at ascertaining the correlation between levels of maternal milk contamination by environmental Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDC) and infants’ neurobehavioral development. Pregnant women (n=200) were enrolled at Parma Hospital (Italy) and mother-infant dyads have been convened one, three, six and 12 months after delivery for assessing EDC exposure by biological samples and the application of validated tests to evaluate the potential impact on neurodevelopment, depending on the age (1mo, Visual Preference Paradigm; 3mo, Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm, FFSF; 6mo, Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence; 12mo, Barrier Task). The FFSF consists of a three-step process in which maternal responsiveness is experimentally manipulated by asking the mother to maintain a still, poker face (‘still-face’ episode) when interacting with her infant. Sessions have been video-recorded, with two different cameras, allowing close focus on both subjects. The FFSF triggers measurable behavioral regulation indexes in infants, reflecting the level of their distress. A micro-analytical 1-sec behavioral analysis of infants’ socio-emotional stress response is conducted on a part of the sample by applying the Parent-Infant Coding System (PICS) to assess infant socio-cognitive development (i.e., self-regulation, socio-emotional competence). Specific PICS features are going to be employed to investigate infants’ socio-emotional stress across the FFSF. Different functions of parental touch and vocalizations are going to be considered as potential environmental regulators of infants’ socio-emotional stress. Finally, the automatic and unconscious mirroring of emotional facial expressions between the two interactants (i.e., Rapid Facial Mimicry) is going to be investigated via a frame-by-frame analysis as a measure of the quality of the mother-infant bond. By combining psychology-based experimental approach with ethological, observational coding methods we intend to delineate a preliminary assessment of 3-months-old infants’ cognitive health and socio-emotional outcomes.
This research is funded by Life18 ENV/IT/0004601 MILCH.
TO TALK OR NOT TO TALK… THIS IS THE QUESTION WITH BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS (Tursiops truncatus) IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT
Stefano Bigiani
Talking to animals is a common practice that has positive effects on humans, like the reduction of stress and blood pressure. Its effects on animals are less clear, and only a few studies show how animals are sensitive to humans’ voices and how it can influence their behaviors. However, it is still not well known how talking to animals really influences them. In this study, we tested a group of ten bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) to evaluate whether the trainer’s excitative talking can affect their welfare, emotional state, and performance. We performed 30 energy sessions, i.e., sessions in which trainers use hand signals to ask dolphins to perform specific behaviors. We performed 15 of these sessions, joining the hand signals with talking to the dolphins (TD), and another 15 without talking with them (NTD). Finally, we evaluated how the dolphins’ welfare, emotional state, and performance changed between the two types of sessions. Our results show how talking to the dolphins is extremely positive for them. Specifically, all dolphins tested significantly improved in all three factors studied during TD sessions. Therefore, talking to animals could be an easy way to improve their welfare, as well as their emotional state and performance, and it should be a common and widespread practice in zoos and other facilities hosting animals.
POSSIBLE ROLE OF IMITATION IN SOCIAL AFFILIATION IN BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS (Tursiops truncatus), UNDER HUMAN CARE
Imitation is a sort of interaction between two individuals in which one mimics the actions of the other. It is at the basis of social learning and can play a role in social affiliation. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are known to perform many imitative behaviors, usually with the goal of social learning or cultural transmission. However, the role of imitation in social bonding has only been hypothesized but never observed or demonstrated. Here, we report the first observation of two dolphins, under humans’ care, that performed imitative behavior aiming to improve their social affiliations. Specifically, the two dolphins, as they increased their social bond, started imitating the characteristic behaviors of the other individual, also synchronizing their execution.
TRAINING SESSIONS DETECT EMOTIONAL STATES IN BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN (Tursiops truncatus)
The bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is the most common cetacean housed in a controlled environment, and it has been the subject of several studies aimed at evaluating factors affecting its welfare. Many have found that good welfare is correlated with positive emotional states. As a result, developing methods to assess dolphins’ emotional states has become a key goal for evaluating and promoting their welfare. The cognitive bias test is a test increasingly used to evaluate animals’ emotional states. With it, animals are faced with an ambiguous situation in which they do not know if the reward is high or low. In this condition, the speed at which they go to where they will receive the reward depends on their expectation of the type of reward, which depends on their emotional state. Training sessions represent an ideal example of an ambiguous situation, as, during these, dolphins return to the trainers and receive a variable reward. Moreover, as dolphins are involved in some training sessions a day, they could be an easy way to apply cognitive bias tests and evaluate dolphins’ emotional state. Here we tested this assumption, showing how training sessions are effective in measuring dolphins’ emotional states.
Look at me and tell me how I feel! Investigation on how donkeys express their emotions.
Samanta Seganfreddo
Donkeys are gaining a prominent role in the field of animal assisted interventions (AAIs) as they are the third most involved species in Italy and one of the five species endorsed by the Italian Guidelines for the implementation of animal assisted therapy and educational projects. Their involvement in the AAI setting implies the necessity of understanding the nature of their emotional experience, to protect the quality of the relationship and the effectiveness and safety of AAIs.
Emotions are not directly measurable mental states yet manifested through physiological (e.g. heart rate variability) and behavioural (e.g. escape from a negative stimulus) reactions. Thus, although determining how animals show emotions is a tricky riddle, behavioural observations can be a valuable tool to assess them.
We structured two tests, i.e. positive vs negative, based on a previously performed operant conditioning. In the first one, animals had to push a buzzer with their muzzles to obtain a food reward (i.e. palatable food); in the second, animals received a non-edible material (i.e. stones) instead of the food prize. This allowed the investigation of donkeys’ emotional manifestation in two induced emotional contexts (i.e. rewarding vs frustrating). Thus, we looked at facies (ears positions in particular), body postures and behaviours (e.g. movement or explorative behaviours). Nine adult and healthy donkeys were involved in the study. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Wilcoxon’s test were applied to evaluate significant differences in the duration and frequency of behavioural and postural/facial manifestations expressed in the two tests. The first three components of the PCA explained 83.3% of the observed variability, with the first component discriminating subjects’ data based on the test (positive/negative). For instance, animals kept their ears erect frontally (p<0.0001), stood with a bent knee (p=0.003) and walked (p<0.001) significantly more during the negative test.
This study explores the manifestation of emotions in donkeys, looking for the facial expressions, postures and behaviours these animals show in two different emotional conditions. The results could represent a first step for the drafting of an operational protocol aiming to identify reliable and non-invasive indicators of donkeys’ emotional states, to safeguard donkey’s welfare.
SIE2022Padova 