The long term aim with this study was to identify predictors or early indicators of tail biting outbreaks using registrations from electronic feeders. This study is based on information about daily frequency of feeder visits (DFV) and daily feed consumption (DFC) recorded in electronic feeders from 460 noncastrated boars in tail biting pens (TB pens, n = 21) and matched control pens (Con pens, ...

What is tail biting? Tail biting is the oral manipulation of the tail of another pig that inflicts skin wounds and can result in amputation of parts of the tail or even the rump. Normal pig behaviour does not include tail biting. The occurrence of tail biting is a complex and multi-factorial problem and many risk factors are known to increase the chance of tail biting. In an attempt to prevent ...

Approximately 5% of pigs slaughtered in the UK have been tail-bitten, leading to welfare and production issues. Tail biting is sporadic and not all pigs tail bite. The aim of this study was to identify factors that are common in pigs that perform tail-biting behaviour, and that might be used in a predictive way to identify such animals. The behaviour of 159 pigs was observed in the post-weaning...

This study surveys animals that use soft tissues rather than rigid links to build jaw joints. Hard biting elements are useful; they are used in piercing or shearing during feeding and interactive behaviors and can directly impact survival and reproduction. The best understood biting systems include biting elements that are mounted on rigid jaw links that form a joint capable of transmitting the...

Workers in many insect societies interact via body contact with their nest mates, and social biting and other forms of contact may play a general role in regulating task performance. Here I present evidence that social biting affects task performance without direct reproductive conflict in Polybia occidentalis, a swarm-founding eusocial wasp. Polybia occidentalis workers engaged in social bitin...

To estimate human exposure to potential vectors of eastern equine encephalomyelitis (EEE) virus, we compared collections of putative EEE virus vectors from human biting collections with collections from CDC, AB (American Biophysics), and New Jersey light traps and resting boxes in enzootic/epidemic foci of EEE virus in southeastern Massachusetts. Human biting collections caught significantly mo...

Background: Nail biting (NB) is a common, but unresolved, problem in psychiatry, psychology, medicine and dentistry. It is the habit of biting one’s nails, is commonly observed in both children and young adults Materials & Methods: The study was a comparative cross‐ sectional microbiological study, conducted on the saliva samples of 40 chronic nail biting subjects in that 20 were males and 20 w...

Tail-biting trellises of linear and nonlinear block codes are addressed. We refine the information-theoretic approach of a previous work on conventional trellis representation, and show that the same ideas carry over to tail-biting trellises. We present lower bounds on the state and branch complexity profiles of these representations. These bounds are expressed in terms of mutual information be...

BACKGROUND Tail biting is a common problem in intensive pig farming, affecting both welfare and production. Although routine tail docking is banned within the EU, it remains a common practice to prevent tail biting. Straw as environmental enrichment has been proposed as an alternative to tail docking, but its effectiveness against tail biting and function in manure handling systems have to be c...