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The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship

It is now widely recognised that a positive human-animal relationship is beneficial not only for farm animals’ welfare but also for productivity and the quality of products. A better understanding of animal emotions is an important goal in disciplines ranging from neuroscience to animal welfare scie...

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Autores principales: Marcet-Rius, Míriam, Pageat, Patrick, Bienboire-Frosini, Cécile, Teruel, Eva, Monneret, Philippe, Leclercq, Julien, Cozzi, Alessandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7653863/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33292637
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40813-020-00167-x
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author Marcet-Rius, Míriam
Pageat, Patrick
Bienboire-Frosini, Cécile
Teruel, Eva
Monneret, Philippe
Leclercq, Julien
Cozzi, Alessandro
author_facet Marcet-Rius, Míriam
Pageat, Patrick
Bienboire-Frosini, Cécile
Teruel, Eva
Monneret, Philippe
Leclercq, Julien
Cozzi, Alessandro
author_sort Marcet-Rius, Míriam
collection PubMed
description It is now widely recognised that a positive human-animal relationship is beneficial not only for farm animals’ welfare but also for productivity and the quality of products. A better understanding of animal emotions is an important goal in disciplines ranging from neuroscience to animal welfare science, but few reliable tools exist for measuring these emotions. In this study, whether the provision of toys to solicit play behaviour in pigs is associated with a change in the human-animal relationship and the emotional state of pigs was investigated. We involved a group of sixteen mini-pigs housed in an experimental setting and the use of a preliminary test called the ‘strange person’ test. After a Control and a Play session (with medium-sized dog toys, balls with ropes), the strange person test was performed. During the test, a person wearing a colourful overall, a hood, a mask, gloves and boots (unknown person with an odd appearance) entered the pen, where 2 mini-pigs were housed, for a 2-min video recording. The strange person test results after the Play and Control sessions were compared. The results showed that the latency to approach the person (duration in seconds) and the duration for which the pig was distant from the strange person (duration in seconds) were significantly lower after the Play session than after the Control session (Degrees of Freedom =30; Statistic of the F test =39.1; p < 0.0001 and Degrees of Freedom =15; Statistic of the F test =54.3; p < 0.0001, respectively). The duration of direct contact (duration in seconds) (Degrees of Freedom =15; Statistic of the F test =14.8; p = 0.002), the need to separate the pig from the strange person (frequency) (Degrees of Freedom =30; Statistic of the F test =9.3; p = 0.005) and the duration of tail movement (duration in seconds) (Degrees of Freedom =15; Statistic of the F test =12.6; p = 0.003) were all significantly higher after the Play sessions than after the Control sessions. Overall, the results suggest a change in the human-animal relationship after the Play sessions: the pigs seemed to be less fearful and more inclined to interact with the strange person, showing a more positive emotional state. This preliminary study suggests that the provision of toys, and more precisely, the opportunity to perform object play behaviour, and sometimes, spontaneously, social play behaviour, can improve the human-animal relationship. Additional research to explore this topic thoroughly may yield interesting results because a positive emotional state of the animals and a good human-animal relationship are essential to ensure good quality of life of farm animals.
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spelling pubmed-76538632020-11-10 The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship Marcet-Rius, Míriam Pageat, Patrick Bienboire-Frosini, Cécile Teruel, Eva Monneret, Philippe Leclercq, Julien Cozzi, Alessandro Porcine Health Manag Research It is now widely recognised that a positive human-animal relationship is beneficial not only for farm animals’ welfare but also for productivity and the quality of products. A better understanding of animal emotions is an important goal in disciplines ranging from neuroscience to animal welfare science, but few reliable tools exist for measuring these emotions. In this study, whether the provision of toys to solicit play behaviour in pigs is associated with a change in the human-animal relationship and the emotional state of pigs was investigated. We involved a group of sixteen mini-pigs housed in an experimental setting and the use of a preliminary test called the ‘strange person’ test. After a Control and a Play session (with medium-sized dog toys, balls with ropes), the strange person test was performed. During the test, a person wearing a colourful overall, a hood, a mask, gloves and boots (unknown person with an odd appearance) entered the pen, where 2 mini-pigs were housed, for a 2-min video recording. The strange person test results after the Play and Control sessions were compared. The results showed that the latency to approach the person (duration in seconds) and the duration for which the pig was distant from the strange person (duration in seconds) were significantly lower after the Play session than after the Control session (Degrees of Freedom =30; Statistic of the F test =39.1; p < 0.0001 and Degrees of Freedom =15; Statistic of the F test =54.3; p < 0.0001, respectively). The duration of direct contact (duration in seconds) (Degrees of Freedom =15; Statistic of the F test =14.8; p = 0.002), the need to separate the pig from the strange person (frequency) (Degrees of Freedom =30; Statistic of the F test =9.3; p = 0.005) and the duration of tail movement (duration in seconds) (Degrees of Freedom =15; Statistic of the F test =12.6; p = 0.003) were all significantly higher after the Play sessions than after the Control sessions. Overall, the results suggest a change in the human-animal relationship after the Play sessions: the pigs seemed to be less fearful and more inclined to interact with the strange person, showing a more positive emotional state. This preliminary study suggests that the provision of toys, and more precisely, the opportunity to perform object play behaviour, and sometimes, spontaneously, social play behaviour, can improve the human-animal relationship. Additional research to explore this topic thoroughly may yield interesting results because a positive emotional state of the animals and a good human-animal relationship are essential to ensure good quality of life of farm animals. BioMed Central 2020-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7653863/ /pubmed/33292637 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40813-020-00167-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Marcet-Rius, Míriam
Pageat, Patrick
Bienboire-Frosini, Cécile
Teruel, Eva
Monneret, Philippe
Leclercq, Julien
Cozzi, Alessandro
The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
title The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
title_full The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
title_fullStr The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
title_full_unstemmed The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
title_short The provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
title_sort provision of toys to pigs can improve the human-animal relationship
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7653863/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33292637
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40813-020-00167-x
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