Aggressive interactions, and their consequences, are the most important causes of poor welfare in piglets. Aggressive behaviour can be modulated by the prenatal and neonatal environment in several species. Commercially kept pregnant sows are often subjected to food restriction, which can compromise their welfare. Limited information is available on the consequences of sow hunger during pregnanc...

Previous studies suggest that urine-borne pheromones play an important role in lobster agonistic and sexual behaviour. This paper investigates the pattern of urine release in catheterised, but otherwise freely moving, adult lobsters with respect to feeding, social and non-social activities. Lobsters on average released 4.1 ml (1 % of body mass) of urine over a 12 h period; this more than double...

A wide diversity of animal models has been used to examine antidepressant activity. These range from relatively simple models sensitive to acute treatment, to highly sophisticated models that reputedly model some aspect of depressive illness and which yield a positive response to prolonged, chronic, drug treatment. In recent years antidepressant drug research has focused on the search for antid...

The parental behaviour of male vervet monkeys, Cercopithecus aethiops, was examined to determine whether (1) females respond to the parental behaviour of males and (2) males vary the amount of parental care they provide depending upon the presence of the infant's mother. Eleven males and 11 infants from four groups were observed under dyadic conditions in which the male could or could not see t...

We have investigated the effect of mirror-elicited agonistic behaviour on oxygen consumption in the Mozambique tilapia, Oreochromis mossambicus (Cichlidae). Males exposed to their mirror image showed higher frequencies of both lateral display and tail-beating and escalated aggression more frequently than males exposed to a transparent glass that was used as a control for the presence of a novel...

Dimorphism on dominance and agonistic behaviour in mammals tends to be strongly biased toward males. In this review, we focus on a select few species of mammals in which females are as or more aggressive than males, and/or are dominant to males, and explore the role of androgenic hormones in mediating this important difference. While the data are not as clear-cut as those published on tradition...

It has been repeatedly suggested that primates trade social services for fitness benefits in their relationships with the opposite sex. We tested this proposal in a colony of captive chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, by examining behavioural data on grooming, agonistic support and food sharing in relation to genetically established paternity. We found no support for the notion of trade. First, male...

Third-party interventions are defined as the interruption of dyadic interactions by third animals through direct physical contact, interposing or threats. Previous studies focused on analysing interventions against agonistic encounters. However, evaluations of interventions against affiliative behaviours in relation to the intervening animal’s social relationships and its social and spatial pos...

Please cite this article in press as: Mafli, A., e tortoises, Animal Behaviour (2011), doi:10.1 Although body coloration is often used in social interactions, few studies have tested whether it is linked to a suite of behavioural traits. We examined whether among captive adult male eastern Hermann’s tortoises, Eurotestudo boettgeri, behavioural patterns covary with eumelanic coloration of the s...