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Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves
Hunger remains a significant animal welfare concern as restricted feeding practices are common on farms. Studies to date have focused on negative effects on health and productivity but little research has addressed the feeling of hunger, mostly due to methodological difficulties in assessing animals...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9845969/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36651027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0475 |
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author | Lecorps, Benjamin Woodroffe, Raphaela E. von Keyserlingk, Marina A.G. Weary, Daniel M. |
author_facet | Lecorps, Benjamin Woodroffe, Raphaela E. von Keyserlingk, Marina A.G. Weary, Daniel M. |
author_sort | Lecorps, Benjamin |
collection | PubMed |
description | Hunger remains a significant animal welfare concern as restricted feeding practices are common on farms. Studies to date have focused on negative effects on health and productivity but little research has addressed the feeling of hunger, mostly due to methodological difficulties in assessing animals' subjective experiences. Here, we explored the use of a cognitive approach to disentangle motivational hunger (a normal state that is of limited welfare concern) from distressful hunger (a state associated with intense negative emotions). Cognitive performance in a foraging task is expected to follow an inverted U relationship with hunger levels, providing an opportunity to make inferences about different hunger states. We assessed the effect of milk restriction on calf cognition in two experiments using a modified hole-board test. Experiment 1 showed that reducing milk allowance from 12 to 6 l d(−1) impaired all measures of cognitive performance. Experiment 2 showed that the same type of feed restriction also disrupted calves’ capacity to re-learn. We conclude that hunger associated with reduced milk allowance can disrupt cognitive performance of dairy calves, a result consistent with the experience of distressful hunger. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9845969 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-98459692023-01-20 Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves Lecorps, Benjamin Woodroffe, Raphaela E. von Keyserlingk, Marina A.G. Weary, Daniel M. Biol Lett Animal Behaviour Hunger remains a significant animal welfare concern as restricted feeding practices are common on farms. Studies to date have focused on negative effects on health and productivity but little research has addressed the feeling of hunger, mostly due to methodological difficulties in assessing animals' subjective experiences. Here, we explored the use of a cognitive approach to disentangle motivational hunger (a normal state that is of limited welfare concern) from distressful hunger (a state associated with intense negative emotions). Cognitive performance in a foraging task is expected to follow an inverted U relationship with hunger levels, providing an opportunity to make inferences about different hunger states. We assessed the effect of milk restriction on calf cognition in two experiments using a modified hole-board test. Experiment 1 showed that reducing milk allowance from 12 to 6 l d(−1) impaired all measures of cognitive performance. Experiment 2 showed that the same type of feed restriction also disrupted calves’ capacity to re-learn. We conclude that hunger associated with reduced milk allowance can disrupt cognitive performance of dairy calves, a result consistent with the experience of distressful hunger. The Royal Society 2023-01-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9845969/ /pubmed/36651027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0475 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Animal Behaviour Lecorps, Benjamin Woodroffe, Raphaela E. von Keyserlingk, Marina A.G. Weary, Daniel M. Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
title | Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
title_full | Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
title_fullStr | Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
title_full_unstemmed | Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
title_short | Hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
title_sort | hunger affects cognitive performance of dairy calves |
topic | Animal Behaviour |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9845969/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36651027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0475 |
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