ZO3309 Animal Mangement & Welfare

Development of abnormal
behaviours

Cath Dennis
 Abnormal behaviour

• ‘Behaviour which differs in pattern, frequency or

context from that which is shown by most
members of the species in conditions that allow
a full range of behaviour’ Broom (2019)
• Identification requires familiarity with species
norms
Motivation
 What’s inside the box?
Motivation
• the internal process or state that determines an
animal’s behavioural responses to
environmental stimuli at different times
• Complex interaction of neuronal, hormonal and
physiological processes.
Core emotional systems
+ve
Basic emotion Purpose
SEEKING Find things
explore

‘Salience* network’ – cognitive

control – integrating sensory input
to guide attention, attend to
motivationally salient stimuli and
modulate behaviour.
The SN’s cortico-straito-thalamo-
cortical loop appears central to
mechanisms of cognitive control.
*‘most notable or important’
 Core emotional systems
-ve +ve
Basic emotion Purpose Basic emotion Purpose
FEAR Avoid danger and SEEKING Find things
avoid danger predators explore

PANIC Motivates herd to LUST Reproduction

Grief; stay together (also sex
Forms of distress
separation mother/young)
distress
RAGE Escape restraint CARING Raise young and
anger nurturing social cooperation
PLAY Teach social skills
joy
Jaak Panksepp:
Core emotional circuits that are in the subcortex of all mammals
 What is (di)stress?
• Stress is the ‘non-specific response of the
body to any demand on it’ (Selye, 1983)

Eustress Too
No
many
stimuli
stimuli
 What is stress?
Physiological mechanism
• Hypothalamic – pituitary – adrenal axis
(HPA)
 Acute stress response
• ‘fight or flight’
• Adrenaline
(epinephrine)
Nerve
• Nervous control impulses via
sympathetic
nerves

Adrenaline
(adrenal
medulla)
 Chronic stress response
• ‘on standby’ ACTH
• Corticosteroids releasing
hormone

• Endocrine control

ACTH

Corticosteriods
(adrenal cortex)
 Stress and welfare

➢ suggest that prolonged stressors result in

glucocorticoid receptor resistance
➢ interferes with appropriate regulation of
inflammation
➢ important role in wide range of diseases
➢ broad implications for understanding the role of
stress in health
 Stress and welfare

➢ Rodents - stress can affect metabolic dysfunction e.g. insulin

resistance; ageing processes e.g. cellular senescence
➢ Humans -➢stressors
suggestassociated with accelerated
that prolonged ageing,in
stressors result
metabolic and immune alterations
glucocorticoid receptor resistance
➢ Increased➢risk of metabolic
interferes with disorders
appropriateoften associated
regulation ofwith other
stress-related conditions, such as mental health disorders,
inflammation
cardiovascular disease role
➢ important and increased susceptibility
in wide range to infections.
of diseases
➢ Favourable modifications
➢ broad implications in for
stressors are associated
understanding the role of
stress in
with reductions in health
incidence of metabolic disorders
Central to this social signal transduction theory of
depression is the hypothesis that experiences of social
threat and adversity up-regulate components of the
immune system involved in inflammation.
…proinflammatory cytokines…… may be a key
phenomenon driving depression pathogenesis and
recurrence, as well as the overlap of depression with
several somatic conditions including asthma, rheumatoid
arthritis, chronic pain, metabolic syndrome,
cardiovascular disease, obesity, and neurodegeneration.
 Can we measure stress?
• Cortisol (corticosterone) ELISA: blood, saliva,
hair, faeces
• ‘Autonomic emotional responses do not define
welfare … and are not… independent indicators
of suffering’ (Stamp Dawkins 2008)
 Sources of distress
• Living in human society:
- boredom
- lack of oral satisfaction
- lack of social contact
- forced social contact
- sexual frustration
 Responses to frustration

• Displacement activity/self-directed
behaviours
• Helplessness/shutdown
• Stereotypic behaviour
 Displacement behaviours
• Normal behaviours that occur in situations
where they would not normally be expected
• Associated with uncertainty & anxiety
• Mostly self-directed activities e.g. scratching,
self-grooming, yawning
Rate of self-grooming in long-tailed
macaques increased when females
within 1m of dominant male.
Conflict situation: females attracted
to male but risked attack
Troisi & Schino 1987
 Helplessness
• Parallels with depression
• ‘SEEKING’ shut down
• Understanding/ belief that they have no
control think, feel, act as if helpless
• ‘evidence that both neural adaptations and
behavioral despair occur in response to
uncontrollable aversive experiences in rodents’
 Stereotypy

‘repeated, relatively invariant sequence of

movements which has no obvious
purpose’

Fraser & Broom 1990

 Stereotypic behaviour

Cronin et al (1986)
 Development of stereotypy
Stereotypies in sows develop in four distinct
stages following tethering
• escape attempts lasting on average 45 mins,
• a phase of inactivity that lasts about 1 day
• a progressive reappearance of outward-directed
activities, lasting around 6 days, that form the
background on which
• basic stereotypies develop
 Dopamine
• Dopamine drives motivation: encourages us to
act, either to achieve something good or to avoid
something bad (SEEKING).
• Stereotypy associated with increased levels of
dopamine
• Can be induced by
– Amphetamine: dopamine release
– Cocaine: dopamine reuptake inhibitor
– Apomorphine: dopamine receptor agonist
‘genotype-dependent upregulation of transmission
in midbrain dopaminergic pathways…. extremely
important to the underlying causes.’
Dopamine

McBride & Hemmings, 2009

 Endorphins
• Endogenous opiates
• Analgesia
• Sense of well-being
 Endorphins
• Administration of opiate receptor blocker
slows or stops stereotypy performance
(rats, humans, horses)
• Plasma β-endorphin levels found not to
vary between stereotypic and control
groups of horses (McGreevy & Pell, 1999)
 Overall picture?
• Murky!
• Genetic & environmental components
• Dopamine central but possible roles for
other neurotransmitters B-endorphin,
serotonin, acetylecholine, GABA

…..more research required

 Stereotypy as coping
• Bank voles (Odberg, 1986) cited in Mason (1991)
Locomotor stereotypy
Locomotor stereotypy
Oral stereotypy
Self mutilation/ self-injurious
behaviour
Cribbing & Windsucking
 Questions
• Is a stereotypic animal failing to cope or
coping better?
‘self-directed stereotypies in captive rhesus
monkeys are related both to brain pathology, and
to an adaptive mechanism that allows those that
express them to better cope with acute stressors.’
 Questions
• Is a stereotypic animal failing to cope or
coping better?
• How would you manage stereotypic
behaviour?
 Enrichment
‘Environmental enrichment is a concept
which describes how the environments of
captive animals can be changed for the
benefit of the inhabitants’
Grandin 1988
 Goals
• Increase behavioural diversity
• Reduce frequencies of abnormal behaviour
• Increase positive utilisation of the
environment
• Increase the ability to cope with challenges
in a more normal way
• Increase the range or number of normal

?
(i.e. wild) behaviour patterns
 Levels of enrichment
• Primary – normal environment
• Secondary – specifically designed
enrichment materials/ activities
Types of enrichment
Social
Occupational
Physical
Sensory
Nutritional
Types of enrichment
Social
Occupational
Physical
Sensory
Nutritional
Types of enrichment
Social
Occupational
Physical
Sensory
Nutritional
Types of enrichment
Social
Occupational
Physical
Sensory
Nutritional
Types of enrichment
Social
Occupational
Physical
Sensory
Nutritional
 Does it work?

‘stereotypy can be both prevented and reversed

with appropriate environmental modification’

‘oral stereotypy in herbivores can be reduced by

encouraging giraffe to engage in more
naturalistic foraging behaviour’
 Only if it actually enriches….
‘If it cannot be shown that a suggested
‘improvement in welfare’, such as
environmental enrichment, does not improve
animal health and/or does not give animals
something they want, then it is difficult to
argue that there has been any genuine
improvement in animal welfare at all’
Dawkins (2008)
 Only if it actually enriches….
‘If it cannot be shown that a suggested
‘improvement in welfare’, such as
environmental enrichment, does not improve
animal health and/or does not give animals
something they want, then it is difficult to
argue that there has been any genuine
improvement in animal welfare at all’
Dawkins (2008)