Hair pulling and eating in captive rhesus monkey troops

Hair pulling and eating has not yet received attention in the nonhuman primate literature. Hair pulling and eating was recorded 388 times in two heterogeneous troops of healthy rhesus monkeys that were kept according to modern management practices. The behavior in question consists of the following sequence: pulling with the fingers (1/3 of cases) or with the teeth (2/3 of cases) tufts of hair from one's own or from a partner's coat; chewing the hair and finally swallowing it; the undigested material is excreted in the feces. Hair pulling was almost exclusively (378/388) partner-directed. It was observed 364 times between animals whose dominance relationships were known; it was performed in 96% (349/364) of observations by a dominant but only in 4% (15/364) of observations by a subordinate monkey. The recipient of hair pulling showed typical fear and/or avoidance reactions. In both troops young animals (2-8 years of age) engaged in hair pulling and eating significantly more often than old animals (10-26 years of age). There was no evidence that nutritional, toxicological or climatic factors were responsible for the manifestation of this behavior. It was concluded that, similar to trichotillomania in man, wool pulling and eating in sheep and muskox, and feather picking in poultry, hair pulling and eating is an aggressive behavioral disorder in rhesus monkeys reflecting adjustment problems to a stressful environment.     

Calculated reciprocity? A comparative test with six primate species

Little evidence of calculated reciprocity has been found in non-human primates so far. In this study, we used a simple experimental set-up to test whether partners pulled a sliding table to altruistically provide food to each other in short-term interactions. We tested 46 dyads of chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, brown capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys to examine whether a subject’s tendency to provide food to a partner was directly affected by the partner’s previous behaviour, by the species, by the condition (i.e., whether the partner could access the food provided by the subject) and by the social tolerance levels within each dyad. Chimpanzees and orangutans were the only species pulling significantly more when the partner could retrieve the food altruistically provided. However, no species reciprocated food exchanges, as subjects’ probability to pull was not affected by the previous number of the partner’s pulls, with the possible exception of one orangutan dyad. Although subjects clearly knew how the apparatus worked and easily obtained food for themselves, individuals did not usually take the opportunity to provide food to their partners, suggesting that calculated reciprocity is not a common behaviour and that food exchanges are usually not reciprocated in the short-term within dyads.     

Selenoprotein expression and function—Selenoprotein W

Selenoprotein W (SeW) is a small selenoprotein (85 to 88 amino acids) first identified in sheep suffering from selenium deficiency. The levels are highest in muscle, heart (except rodents) spleen and brain. The deduced amino acid sequence has been obtained for mice, rats, monkeys, humans, sheep, pigs, fish and chickens. The sequences of SeW are identical in rats and mice as well as monkeys and humans. In all eight species of animals cysteine is present at residue number 9 and selenocysteine at residue number 13. Residue number 37 is cysteine in six species of animal with fish and chickens as the exceptions. Of those examined, the rodent SeW is the only one containing four cysteines whereas the others contain only two cysteines. Glutathionylaltion has been shown for SeW from rats and monkeys but has not been confirmed for this selenoprotein from the other six animals. The biological function of SeW has not been definitely identified. Evidence has been obtained that it can serve as an antioxidant, responds to stress, involved in cell immunity, specific target for methylmercury, and has thioredoxin-like function.     

Creative or created: using anecdotes to investigate animal cognition

In non-human animals, creative behaviour occurs spontaneously only at low frequencies, so is typically missed by standardised observational methods. Experimental approaches have tended to rely overly on paradigms from child development or adult human cognition, which may be inappropriate for species that inhabit very different perceptual worlds and possess quite different motor capacities than humans. The analysis of anecdotes offers a solution to this impasse, provided certain conditions are met. To be reliable, anecdotes must be recorded immediately after observation, and only the records of scientists experienced with the species and the individuals concerned should be used. Even then, interpretation of a single record is always ambiguous, and analysis is feasible only when collation of multiple records shows that a behaviour pattern occurs repeatedly under similar circumstances. This approach has been used successfully to study a number of creative capacities of animals: the distribution, nature and neural correlates of deception across the primate order; the occurrence of teaching in animals; and the neural correlates of several aptitudes--in birds, foraging innovation, and in primates, innovation, social learning and tool-use. Drawing on these approaches, we describe the use of this method to investigate a new problem, the cognition of the African elephant, a species whose sheer size and evolutionary distance from humans renders the conventional methods of comparative psychology of little use. The aim is both to chart the creative cognitive capacities of this species, and to devise appropriate experimental methods to confirm and extend previous findings.     

Patterned-String Tasks: Relation between Fine Motor Skills and Visual-Spatial Abilities in Parrots

String-pulling and patterned-string tasks are often used to analyse perceptual and cognitive abilities in animals. In addition, the paradigm can be used to test the interrelation between visual-spatial and motor performance. Two Australian parrot species, the galah (Eolophus roseicapilla) and the cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus), forage on the ground, but only the galah uses its feet to manipulate food. I used a set of string pulling and patterned-string tasks to test whether usage of the feet during foraging is a prerequisite for solving the vertical string pulling problem. Indeed, the two species used techniques that clearly differed in the extent of beak-foot coordination but did not differ in terms of their success in solving the string pulling task. However, when the visual-spatial skills of the subjects were tested, the galahs outperformed the cockatiels. This supports the hypothesis that the fine motor skills needed for advanced beak-foot coordination may be interrelated with certain visual-spatial abilities needed for solving patterned-string tasks. This pattern was also found within each of the two species on the individual level: higher motor abilities positively correlated with performance in patterned-string tasks. This is the first evidence of an interrelation between visual-spatial and motor abilities in non-mammalian animals.     

Resurrecting ancient animal genomes: the extinct moa and more

Recently two developments have had a major impact on the field of ancient DNA (aDNA). First, new advances in DNA sequencing, in combination with improved capture/enrichment methods, have resulted in the recovery of orders of magnitude more DNA sequence data from ancient animals. Second, there has been an increase in the range of tissue types employed in aDNA. Hair in particular has proven to be very successful as a source of DNA because of its low levels of contamination and high level of ancient endogenous DNA. These developments have resulted in significant advances in our understanding of recently extinct animals: namely their evolutionary relationships, physiology, and even behaviour. Hair has been used to recover the first complete ancient nuclear genome, that of the extinct woolly mammoth, which then facilitated the expression and functional analysis of haemoglobins. Finally, we speculate on the consequences of these developments for the possibility of recreating extinct animals.     

The Weight of Evidence Does Not Support the Listing of Styrene as “Reasonably Anticipated to be a Human Carcinogen” in NTP's Twelfth Report on Carcinogens

Styrene was listed as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” in the twelfth edition of the National Toxicology Program's Report on Carcinogens based on what we contend are erroneous findings of limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans, sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals, and supporting mechanistic data. The epidemiology studies show no consistent increased incidence of, or mortality from, any type of cancer. In animal studies, increased incidence rates of mostly benign tumors have been observed only in certain strains of one species (mice) and at one tissue site (lung). The lack of concordance of tumor incidence and tumor type among animals (even within the same species) and humans indicates that there has been no particular cancer consistently observed among all available studies. The only plausible mechanism for styrene-induced carcinogenesis—a non-genotoxic mode of action that is specific to the mouse lung—is not relevant to humans. As a whole, the evidence does not support the characterization of styrene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” and styrene should not be listed in the Report on Carcinogens.     

Facial Width-To-Height Ratio Relates to Alpha Status and Assertive Personality in Capuchin Monkeys

Social dominance hierarchies play a pivotal role in shaping the behaviour of many species, and sex differences within these hierarchies often exist. To date, however, few physical markers of dominance have been identified. Such markers would be valuable in terms of understanding the etiology of dominant behaviour and changes in social hierarchies over time. Animals may also use such traits to evaluate the potential dominance of others relative to themselves (i.e. a physical “cue”). Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), for example, has been suggested as a cue to dominance in humans, with links to both dominant behaviour and the perception of dominance in other individuals. Whether this association is present in non-human animals is currently not known. Therefore, here we examine within-species links between fWHR and dominant behaviour in 64 brown capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) aged between 2 and 40 years. fWHR was positively associated with alpha status and with a dimensional rating of assertive personality in both males and females. Moreover, fWHR showed significant sexual dimorphism in adults but not juveniles, suggesting a developmental change may occur during puberty. In a sub-sample, sex differences were mediated by weight, suggesting fWHR dimorphism does not exceed what would be expected by differences in body weight. This is the first report of an association between face shape and behaviour in a non-human species. Results are discussed in terms of the role that face-behaviour associations might play within capuchin societies, and the possible selective forces that might have led to the evolution of fWHR-dominance associations in humans.     

Illusion susceptibility in domestic dogs

Domestic dogs play many vital roles in human lives; however, relatively little is known about how they perceive the world visually. Given dogs’ recent popularity as a subject in cognitive and behavioural studies, it is important to understand how they visually interpret the world around them. One way to evaluate perception is to assess illusion susceptibility; specifically, how visual information is processed, interpreted and modified post-retinally. While illusion susceptibility has been used across a variety of species to comparatively assess the similarities and differences in visual processing and perception, this relatively novel methodological approach has only recently been adapted to evaluate perception in domestic dogs. Here, we present a comprehensive overview of the findings from studies that have evaluated domestic dogs’ illusion susceptibility, highlighting the relevance of these results for those studying illusion susceptibility in animals as well as canine behaviour and cognition. More specifically, the ultimate goal of this review is to answer the questions: (a) Are dogs susceptible to visual illusions? (b) If so, are they susceptible to illusions in a way that parallels humans and/or other animals? (c) Are findings, within dogs, consistent and if not, how might these be interpreted and explained?     

Poor design of behavioural experiments gets poor results: examples from intertidal habitats

Many patterns of distribution and abundance of intertidal animals are explained by processes of movements of animals, selecting particular habitats or levels on the shore, or interacting with other species. Movements of intertidal animals have therefore been studied over many years. During this long history, much intertidal ecology has changed in focus from broad-scale to small-scale patterns and processes, although there has been recent refocus on a combination of many scales. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the incidence of field experiments and growing recognition that behaviour is more flexible than originally thought. This review examines changes in the ways that experiments on movements on intertidal animals have been and are being done, taking into account these changes in emphasis. Although some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go. The idea is still prevalent that behaviour is simple, rather invariant and that the animals respond to broad-scale cues that have traditionally been of interest to many investigators. This means that many experiments are still designed to minimise (or ignore) natural variation in behaviour rather than to measure it and that any associated disturbances are considered irrelevant and therefore not evaluated. Understanding the role that behaviour has in establishing and maintaining many of the patterns observed on intertidal shores is crucial to our understanding of the ecology of these habitats. Better experiments, designed logically with appropriate controls to evaluate realistic processes and to measure how behaviour varies among places and from time to time can only improve this understanding.     

Social Behaviour of Individual Oval Squids (Cephalopoda,Teuthoidea, Loliginidae,Sepioteuthis lessoniana) within a Captive School

The social behaviour of individually identified squids was observed over a period of 4 mo. Squids were reared in captivity and maintained in a shoal of up to 18 animals. Distances between animals averaged 1.6 body lengths, similar to the 1.2 body lengths of wild teleost fish schools. Smaller animals schooled less frequently and were found at the periphery, and familiar and unfamiliar animals shoaled together. Eighty-six apparent reproductive events were observed. This species of squid, Sepioteuthis lessoniana, is not sexually dimorphic to the human eye and male squids copulated with both males and females but they directed their attention disproportionately towards females. Most copulations occurred more than a month before spawning, lasted only a few seconds and, unlike field observations on spawning grounds, were not followed by mate-guarding. Two body patterns are described that were used consistently in social interactions by both males and females; these patterns were both associated with reproductive behaviour but their exact function was unclear. A sister species, Sepioteuthis sepioidea, has been described as showing complex social behaviour; in S. lessoniana, no evidence for such behaviour was seen.     

Animal learning and memory: an integration of cognition and ecology

A wonderfully lucid framework for the ways to understand animal behaviour is that represented by the four ‘whys’ proposed by Tinbergen (1963). For much of the past three decades, however, these four avenues have been pursued more or less in parallel. Functional questions, for example, have been addressed by behavioural ecologists, mechanistic questions by psychologists and ethologists, ontogenetic questions by developmental biologists and neuroscientists and phylogenetic questions by evolutionary biologists. More recently, the value of integration between these differing views has become apparent. In this brief review, we concentrate especially on current attempts to integrate mechanistic and functional approaches.

Most of our understanding of learning and memory in animals comes from the psychological literature, which tends to use only rats or pigeons, and more occasionally primates, as subjects. The underlying psychological assumption is of general processes that are similar across species and contexts rather than a range of specific abilities. However, this does not seem to be entirely true as several learned behaviours have been described that are specific to particular species or contexts. The first conspicuous exception to the generalist assumption was the demonstration of long delay taste aversion learning in rats (Garcia et al., 1955), in which it was shown that a stimulus need not be temporally contiguous with a response for the animal to make an association between food and illness. Subsequently, a number of other examples, such as imprinting and song learning in birds (e.g., Bolhuis and Honey, 1998; Catchpole and Slater, 1995; Horn, 1998), have been thoroughly researched. Even in these cases, however, it has been typical for only a few species to be studied (domestic chicks provide the ‘model’ imprinting species and canaries and zebra finches the song learning ‘models’). As a result, a great deal is understood about the neural underpinnings and development of the behaviour, but substantially less is understood about interspecific variation and whether variation in behaviour is correlated with variation in neural processing (see review by Tramontin and Brenowitz, 2000 but see ten Cate and Vos, 1999).     

Heritability and genetic correlations of fear-related behaviour in Red Junglefowl--possible implications for early domestication

Domesticated species differ from their wild ancestors in a number of traits, generally referred to as the domesticated phenotype. Reduced fear of humans is assumed to have been an early prerequisite for the successful domestication of virtually all species. We hypothesized that fear of humans is linked to other domestication related traits. For three generations, we selected Red Junglefowl (ancestors of domestic chickens) solely on the reaction in a standardized Fear of Human-test. In this, the birds were exposed for a gradually approaching human, and their behaviour was continuously scored. This generated three groups of animals, high (H), low (L) and intermediate (I) fearful birds. The birds in each generation were additionally tested in a battery of behaviour tests, measuring aspects of fearfulness, exploration, and sociality. The results demonstrate that the variation in fear response of Red Junglefowl towards humans has a significant genetic component and is genetically correlated to behavioural responses in other contexts, of which some are associated with fearfulness and others with exploration. Hence, selection of Red Junglefowl on low fear for humans can be expected to lead to a correlated change of other behavioural traits over generations. It is therefore likely that domestication may have caused an initial suite of behavioural modifications, even without selection on anything besides tameness.     

Courtship and mating in the whip spider Phrynichus orientalis Weygoldt, 1998 (Chelicerata: Amblypygi)

Mating behaviour and spermatophore morphology of the south-east Asian whip spider Phrynichus orientalis is described. During courtship there is less bodily contact between mates than in other studied species of the same genus. However, a peculiarity for the species is that the pair often pauses for minutes, sitting front to front without any movement. For spermatophore formation, the male shifts his body under that of the female like in many other species. However, after spermatophore formation, the male lures the female to the spermatophore instead of pulling her as in most other species studied. The spermatophore differs from those of most other species of the genus by the fact that the cushions in front of the sperm masses are replaced by a hard, transparent mass which has the same function as the cushions. Mating behaviour and spermatophore morphology of P. orientalis thus show peculiarities that so far have not been described for other species of the genus. It is not clear whether these characters should be considered plesiomorphic or apomorphic. But it does clearly show that there is more diversity within this genus than expected.     

Human habituation reduces hyrax flight initiation distance in Serengeti

Many animal populations are exposed to disturbance originating from human activities. In response to human disturbance, certain animals display a variety of potentially costly behavioural responses, such as increased antipredator behaviour or relocation to new areas. In contrast, other animals seemingly thrive in the presence of humans and benefit from human-derived resources. Flight initiation distance (FID: the distance between predator and prey when prey starts to flee) is a measure commonly used to assess animals’ tolerance to humans. In this study, we tested how FID changes in relation to human presence in two hyrax species in Serengeti National Park. Hyraxes living on kopjes (rock outcrops) among human settlements showed a significantly shorter FID than hyraxes living on kopjes without human settlements. In addition, we found that hyraxes feeding before the experiment had shorter FID than hyraxes resting or being vigilant, and hyraxes disturbed during the early morning had shorter FID than hyraxes disturbed during late morning. We did not find any significant effects of group size or species composition on FID. Our results suggest that hyraxes living in the presence of humans are habituated and are not adversely affected by human settlements.     

A Non-Lévy Random Walk in Chacma Baboons: What Does It Mean?

The Lévy walk is found from amoebas to humans and has been described as the optimal strategy for food research. Recent results, however, have generated controversy about this conclusion since animals also display alternatives to the Lévy walk such as the Brownian walk or mental maps and because movement patterns found in some species only seem to depend on food patches distribution. Here I show that movement patterns of chacma baboons do not follow a Lévy walk but a Brownian process. Moreover this Brownian walk is not the main process responsible for movement patterns of baboons. Findings about their speed and trajectories show that baboons use metal maps and memory to find resources. Thus the Brownian process found in this species appears to be more dependent on the environment or might be an alternative when known food patches are depleted and when animals have to find new resources.     

How should pathogen transmission be modelled?

Host-pathogen models are essential for designing strategies for managing disease threats to humans, wild animals and domestic animals. The behaviour of these models is greatly affected by the way in which transmission between infected and susceptible hosts is modelled. Since host-pathogen models were first developed at the beginning of the 20th century, the 'mass action' assumption has almost always been used for transmission. Recently, however, it has been suggested that mass action has often been modelled wrongly. Alternative models of transmission are beginning to appear, as are empirical tests of transmission dynamics.     

Realized heritability and repeatability of risk-taking behaviour in relation to avian personalities

Personalities are general properties of humans and other animals. Different personality traits are phenotypically correlated, and heritabilities of personality traits have been reported in humans and various animals. In great tits, consistent heritable differences have been found in relation to exploration, which is correlated with various other personality traits. In this paper, we investigate whether or not risk-taking behaviour is part of these avian personalities. We found that (i) risk-taking behaviour is repeatable and correlated with exploratory behaviour in wild-caught hand-reared birds, (ii) in a bi-directional selection experiment on 'fast' and 'slow' early exploratory behaviour, bird lines tend to differ in risk-taking behaviour, and (iii) within-nest variation of risk-taking behaviour is smaller than between-nest variation. To show that risk-taking behaviour has a genetic component in a natural bird population, we bred great tits in the laboratory and artificially selected 'high' and 'low' risk-taking behaviour for two generations. Here, we report a realized heritability of 19.3 +/- 3.3% (s.e.m.) for risk-taking behaviour. With these results we show in several ways that risk-taking behaviour is linked to exploratory behaviour, and we therefore have evidence for the existence of avian personalities. Moreover, we prove that there is heritable variation in more than one correlated personality trait in a natural population, which demonstrates the potential for correlated evolution.     

Viral infections at the animal–human interface—Learning lessons from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This Lilliput explores the current epidemiological and virological arguments for a zoonotic origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the role of bats, pangolins and racoon dogs as viral reservoirs has not yet been proven, a spill-over of a coronavirus infection from animals into humans at the Huanan food market in Wuhan has a much greater plausibility than alternative hypotheses such as a laboratory virus escape, deliberate genetic engineering or introduction by cold chain food products. This Lilliput highlights the dynamic nature of the animal-human interface for viral cross-infections from humans into feral white tail deer or farmed minks (reverse zoonosis). Surveillance of viral infections at the animal-human interface is an urgent task since live animal markets are not the only risks for future viral spill-overs. Climate change will induce animal migration which leads to viral exchanges between animal species that have not met in the past. Environmental change and deforestation will also increase contact between animals and humans. Developing an early warning system for emerging viral infections becomes thus a societal necessity not only for human but also for animal and environmental health (One Health concept). Microbiologists have developed tools ranging from virome analysis in key suspects such as viral reservoirs (bats, wild game animals, bushmeat) and in humans exposed to wild animals, to wastewater analysis to detect known and unknown viruses circulating in the human population and sentinel studies in animal-exposed patients with fever. Criteria need to be developed to assess the virulence and transmissibility of zoonotic viruses. An early virus warning system is costly and will need political lobbying. The accelerating number of viral infections with pandemic potential over the last decades should provide the public pressure to extend pandemic preparedness for the inclusion of early viral alert systems.     

野生动物与宠物

动物可分为野生动物和家养动物,越来越多的野生动物被人们当作宠物来饲养。野生动物作为宠物的危害是巨大的。野生动物对人类的危害主要包括直接攻击人类,携带病原威胁人类以及对环境设施造成的破坏。人类对野生动物的危害包括野生动物驯养繁殖、疾病传播等方面。野生动物对家养动物的危害包括直接危害和疾病危害。因此,野生动物不适合作为宠物饲养,不仅仅是因为它们原本的生活习性,对野生动物资源的破坏,更重要的是病原体可能跨越种间障碍而威胁人类的安全。