1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Study on human-animal relationships : Can animals discriminate between people?
| Project/Area Number |
10660285
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Basic veterinary science/Basic zootechnical science
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| Research Institution | Hiroshima University |
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Principal Investigator |
TANIDA Hajime Hiroshima University, Faculty of Applied Biological Science, Associate Professor, 生物生産学部, 助教授 (20197528)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1998 – 1999
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| Keywords | Human-animal relationships / Cognitive ability / Animal Welfare / Cows / Pigs |
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| Research Abstract |
The human-animal relationships today are complicated and ambiguous. Recently, the relationships between farm animals and consumers of animal products are becoming weak. Our perception towards domestic animals including companion animals are changing with the times. The farmers now realize the importance of human-animal relationships because scientific data support that reproductivity and growth of animals decline by certain behavior of stockpersons, and the farms which keep good relationships with their animals experience high productivity. However, it is not dear whether animals are able to distinguish between individual people or generalize their experiences with one handler to all people. It is of practical importance to know the extent to which fear resulting from aversive handling by one person is generalized to other people. If this is an inevitable consequence of aversive handling, then all people in the animals' environment would soon come to elicit fear, with potentially severe physiological and productivity consequences. This project consists of three parts which are review work ; survey and behavior studies on cows. Review work and survey showed that although Japanese perception towards animals is different from the West in many ways we agree that it is important to improve animal well-being and animal care. According to the studies on cows and pigs using operant conditioning technique, both cows and pigs were able to distinguish between individual people mainly using visual cues. They could discriminate between a rewarder and a non-rewarder based on the cues such as clothes color, face characteristics and body size. These results indicate that when farm animals are handled differently by different people they will behave differently towards those people. It is concluded that the careful and objective selection of applicants for stockperson based on attitude towards animals, and constant education toward stockperson on handling of animals are important.
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