Search

Simple Summary: The present study documents animal welfare concerns associated with a popular form of wildlife tourism: lion cub "petting". With data collected from 49 publicly available videos uploaded by tourists in South Africa, we find that lion cubs in these facilities regularly exhibit stress behaviors, including stereotypies, during tourist interactions. Video analysis shows that cubs in these facilities are subjected to several forms of poor husbandry practices such as being forced to interact outside normal waking hours. These results also suggest that regardless of tourism type—pure entertainment (tourism) or educational or pseudo-training opportunities in animal husbandry for volunteers (voluntourism)—"cub-petting" facilities involve acute negative welfare impacts in addition to the broader harms of normalizing the touching of young lions and perpetuating captive breeding. There is growing concern about captive lion hunting and breeding operations in South Africa, including cub-petting tourism. For the first time, we assess the quality of cub-petting facilities and code the stress behaviors of lion cubs when handled by tourists by analyzing four stress-related behaviors and six indicators of poor husbandry in 49 YouTube videos of tourist–lion cub interactions (from at least 11 South African safari parks, 2008-2019). We also categorized videos as regular tourism vs. voluntourism (tourism under the guise of helping those in need). We found a median of four poor husbandry practices per video, with all but two videos involving very young cubs (under 7 months) and the majority (61%) involving cubs estimated under 3 months old. Two videos claimed to show cubs as young as 9 days old and 1 day old, with their eyes still closed. The lion mother was apparent in only 1 of 49 videos. All but one of the interactions took place during the day, although young cubs are primarily active at night. The majority of videos (77%) showed cubs engaging in at least one stress behavior, and the most common stress behaviors were avoidance and aggression. Comparing voluntourism to regular tourism, we found no difference in instances of poor husbandry or observable stress behaviors (p's > 0.6). These results show that cub-petting operations are characterized by poor cub welfare, including features that are inherently harmful to cub development (e.g., separation from the mother at an early age and forced activity outside normal waking hours). Existing research suggests that many tourists are likely unaware of these negative impacts and may even believe that they are helping the cubs. This analysis provides evidence to the contrary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: To assess the possibility of forming stable and trusting relationships between humans and fishes, we documented the interactions between a familiar human experimenter and seven koi (Cyprinus rubrofuscus). Analyses of video data shows that overall, koi spent more time than expected in close proximity to the human and even sought out physical contact. Moreover, individual fish displayed unique interaction patterns, with some frequently engaging in tactile interaction and others only periodically or rarely doing so. By demonstrating that koi will voluntarily interact with humans and that individual differences play an important role in interaction style, this study provides the first evidence that individuated human–fish relationships may be possible, which has powerful implications for how we think about, treat, protect, and provide care for fish. The study of human–animal interactions has provided insights into the welfare of many species. To date, however, research has largely focused on human relationships with captive mammals, with relatively little exploration of interactions between humans and other vertebrates, despite non-mammals constituting the vast majority of animals currently living under human management. With this study, we aimed to address this gap in knowledge by investigating human–fish interactions at a community garden/aquaponics learning-center that is home to approximately 150 goldfish (Carassius auratus) and seven adult and two juvenile koi (Cyprinus rubrofuscus). After a habituation period (July–September 2019) during which time the fish were regularly provided with the opportunity to engage with the researcher's submerged hand, but were not forced to interact with the researcher, we collected video data on 10 non-consecutive study days during the month of October. This procedure produced 18~20-min interaction sessions, 10 during T1 (when the experimenter first arrived and the fish had not been fed) and eight during T2 (20–30 min after the fish had been fed to satiation; two sessions of which were lost due equipment malfunction). Interactions between the researcher and the seven adult koi were coded from video based on location (within reach, on the periphery, or out of reach from the researcher) and instances of physical, tactile interaction. Analyses revealed that overall, koi spent more time than expected within reach of the researcher during both T1 (p < 0.02) and T2 (p < 0.03). There were also substantial differences between individuals' overall propensity for being within-reach and engaging in physical interaction. These results show that koi will voluntarily interact with humans and that individual koi display unique and consistent patterns of interaction. By providing quantitative data to support anecdotal claims that such relationships exist around the world, this research contributes to the ongoing discoveries highlighting the profound dissonance between how humans think about and treat fish and who fish actually are, thereby emphasizing the necessity of stronger moral and legal protections for fishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Our knowledge of fish welfare is still scant relative to the enormous demands created by aquaculture expansion and focuses primarily on preventing poor health without considering provision of environments conducive to positive experiences. We are far from understanding what individuals of the different species classified under the umbrella term "fish" need to experience good lives. The aquaculture industry has been expanding swiftly, and fishes belonging to hundreds of very different species are now farmed by the billions. Informed by terrestrial animal welfare science, this article aims to set a framework for making progress in investigating how to provide farmed fish with good welfare. This article aims to use contemporary (terrestrial) animal welfare science as a lens to evaluate the state of knowledge concerning welfare in fish species, focusing on farmed fishes. We take advantage of the vast expertise—including previous pitfalls and accomplishments—in the investigation of welfare in terrestrial vertebrates, borrowing questions and methodologies from terrestrial animal welfare science in order to (1) better understand the challenges and opportunities in the study of welfare in fish species, and (2) propose strategies for filling knowledge gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The aim of this study was to determine how individual differences in behavior affect disease risk in Holstein dairy cows housed in two different social environments: (1) a predictable and non-competitive social environment and (2) an unpredictable and competitive social environment. Individual differences in feed intake and feeding behavior before calving were associated with cytological endometritis post-calving; however, the direction and magnitude of these effects were dependent on the social environment. These results provide the first evidence that individual differences in feeding behavior affect cytological endometritis risk differently depending on the social environment. Our aim was to determine whether individual differences in feeding and social behavior in different social environments affect health outcomes in dairy cows. We used eight groups of four animals per treatment assigned to either a 'predictable' or an 'unpredictable' and competitive social environment. Predictable cows were given free access to six feed bins with no change in feed delivery times; whereas, the unpredictable cows were required to share one feed bin with one resident cow and morning feed was delayed 0, 1, 2, or 3 h every other day. On alternate days, the unpredictable cows were also re-assigned to a new bin and a new resident partner. Low daily dry matter intake (DMI) was a risk factor for cytological endometritis in predictable cows (odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval): 0.17 (0.02, 0.53)), but low daily DMI was protective for unpredictable cows (OR: 1.93 (1.09, 4.14)). Although low rate of DMI (kg/min) was a risk factor for cytological endometritis for predictable cows (OR: 4.2 × 10−101 (8.6 × 10−206, 4.8 × 10−30)) it was unrelated to disease for unpredictable cows. There were no associations between feed bin visits or percentage of non-nutritive visits with the likelihood of cytological endometritis. This is the first evidence that individual differences in feeding behavior influence cytological endometritis risk in dairy cows, but the direction and magnitude of these effects is dependent on the social environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Despite increasing interest in fish welfare, we still know very little about positive emotions in fish. This study had two aims: (1) to characterize a previously undescribed social behavior in zebrafish, "heightened-shoaling", and (2) to evaluate whether heightened-shoaling may be a good candidate for future research into positive emotional behavior in zebrafish. Observing six groups of zebrafish housed in 110 L tanks furnished with a sloping gravel substrate, rocks, and artificial plants (10 fish/tank), we found that heightened-shoaling is marked by tight group cohesion, high behavioral synchrony (all fish engaging in the same behaviors at the same time), and low agonism. Episodes of heightened-shoaling occurred in all six groups, but rarely at the same time (only once out of 31 episodes), suggesting that the onset of heightened-shoaling is driven by internal group dynamics rather than external influences. Heightened-shoaling also appeared to be self-reinforcing as it had sustained durations—typically lasting for over 7 min and sometimes lasting for nearly half-an-hour. Collectively, these results are similar to the patterns that typify positive emotional behavior in other animals, for example, social grooming and social play. As the first description of heightened-shoaling, this research extends our knowledge of the range of zebrafish social dynamics and suggests a promising area for future research on positive emotions in fish. Zebrafish, a highly-social species of freshwater fish, are widely studied across many fields of laboratory science including developmental biology, neuroscience, and genomics. Nevertheless, as standard housing for zebrafish typically consists of small and simplistic environments, less is known about their social behavioral repertoire in more naturalistic settings. In particular, spontaneously occurring, socio-positive affiliative behaviors (e.g., social coordination and cohesion) that may be indicative of positive emotional experiences have rarely been reported or studied deliberately in zebrafish. Housing adult zebrafish (10 fish/tank) in large semi-natural tanks (110 L; n = 6) with sloping gravel substrate, rocks, and artificial plants, we observed a previously undescribed behavior: Distinct periods of spontaneous, synchronized, compact aggregations, what we call "heightened-shoaling". This project aimed to quantify the characteristics of this distinctive behavior and compare parameters of heightened-shoaling to baseline periods (normal behavior) and pre-feed periods (feed-anticipatory behavior). First, across 4 days, we selected video-clips (100 s each) from within (i) instances of heightened-shoaling (n = 9), (ii) baseline periods (n = 18), and (iii) pre-feed periods (n = 18). For each of these video clips, we scan sampled every 10 s to determine fish orientations and location within the tank and agonistic behavior. Next, we used an all-occurrence sampling method to record the timing and duration of all episodes of heightened-shoaling behavior when tank-lights were on (8:00 h to 18:00 h) across 10 days. From the scan-sampling data, we found that compared to baseline periods, heightened-shoaling was characterized by increased shoal cohesion (p < 0.0001), increased adherence to the horizontal plane (p < 0.0001), decreased agonism (p < 0.0001), and no diving behavior (lower positions within the water column signal negative effect in zebrafish, p > 0.1). From the all-occurrence sampling data, we found 31 episodes of heightened-shoaling with instances observed in all six tanks and only a single case in which heightened-shoaling occurred in two tanks at the same time. The median episode duration was 7.6 min (Range 1.3–28.6). As the first systematic description of heightened-shoaling behavior, this research contributes to our knowledge of the range of zebrafish social dynamics living in naturalistic environments. Moreover, as a spontaneously occurring, protracted, affiliative behavior, heightened-shoaling appears to be a good candidate for future research into positive emotional behavior in zebrafish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]