Inappropriate responsiveness of the stress system may cause numerous alterations in endocrine, metabolic and autonomic systems. Many studies have been carried out on the effects of acute stress on thyroid function but the effects of chronic stress have not been fully investigated. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of long term handling stress on thyroid function. Study was pe...

Transportation is considered as a major stressor for farm animals and might have deleterious effects on the health, wellbeing, performance and ultimately on product quality. The European Commission has adopted new transportation rules for animal transport, but research on stress related situations before, during and after transport is still scarce. Assessment of stress during animal transportat...

The effect of acute handling stress on haematological profile, blood glucose and lactate (secondary stress markers) in cultured sea bream Sparus aurata was evaluated. Sixty six Sparus aurata were used and equally divided into two groups (A and B). Group A was not subjected to stress, Group B was subjected to acute handling stress. From each fish, biometric data and blood samples were collected ...

The objective of the present research was to quantify the cardiovascular and physiological responses in pigs subjected to novel alleys and ramps. Ten test subject pigs were selected per treatment. The first (trained) group were trained to navigate a course including a ramp. Testing was daily for seven days. Once training was completed, the trained and control (naïve) groups were exposed to a fi...

Health and Moral Stress Questionnaire (HMSQ) was constructed with the aim to assess organizational learning processes and individual skills necessary for the handling of problems connected to five areas of activity: work demands, work task control, support, computer tool use, and ethics. The main hypothesis was that the existence of organizational learning processes and individual skills contri...

Increasing evidence suggests that postnatal events, such as handling or maternal separation, can produce long-term changes in brain function. These are often expressed as changes in the profile of endocrine or behavioral responses to stress. Changes in gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptors (GABARs), which mediate the majority of fast synaptic inhibition in adult brain, have been proposed as ...

We investigated the acute stress response associated with animal personalities by measuring plasma glucocorticoids throughout handling and collected ~2 years of movement and behavioural data in a wild, Critically Endangered animal, Astrochelys radiata (radiated tortoise). To determine whether our standard, brief conscientious handling procedures induce a stress response in our target species, w...

The skin colour of red porgy, Pagrus pagrus, can be modified by exposure to different background colours. Red and white background colours brighten the dark skin colour that develops under common culture conditions in red porgy. To assess whether skin colour is also modified by aquaculture related handling stress, we subjected red porgy to 5 min of netting stress combined with air exposure. Fis...

Ecological immunology is a rapidly growing field of study that focuses on understanding variation in immune systems across species and how this relates to species ecology and evolution. Newly developed field methods aimed at studying variation in immune function in a field setting have yielded many insights. Nonetheless, there continues to be much debate regarding the interpretation of field me...