Viktor Reinhardt

Cohesive Relationships in a Cattle Herd (Bos Indicus)

Cohesive relationships were studied in a semi-wild cattle herd and traced over periods of three to five years. It became evident that mother cows prefer their female and male progeny over non-related calves as grooming and as grazing partners. These associations could always be verified during the first three years and often during the fourth and fifth year as well, the descendants already being sexually fully mature. Comparable personal attachments also existing between siblings, the ensuing family units were strikingly stable and cohesive. Interindividual associations lasting for several years could also be found between non-related descendants of the herd but also between non-related cows. The analytical data led to the conclusion that in natural cattle herds the social structure is based on matriarchal families which in their turn are interconnected by means of friendship relationships between non-kin partners.

Working With Rather Than Against Macaques During Blood Collection

Training macaques to cooperate during blood collection is a practicable and safe alternative to the traditional procedure implying forced restraint. It takes a cumulative total of about 1 hr to train an adult female or adult male rhesus macaque successfully to present a leg voluntarily and accept venipuncture in the homecage. Cooperative animals do not show the significant cortisol response and defensive reactions that typically occur in animals who are forcibly restrained during this common procedure.

MOVEMENT ORDERS AND LEADERSHIP IN A SEMI-WILD CATTLE HERD

Stable movement orders have been found in a semi-wild cattle herd. Orders of voluntary movements (2-4 km to and from nocturnal resting site) were correlated with each other but not with the order of foced movement (dipping). The individual average travelling positions as well as their standard deviations showed no significant dependency on age or on dominance. A tendency for old (experienced) animals to walk in the van and for young ones to make up the rear was only evidenced during forced movement. Calves travelled in the neighbourhood of their dams. It was concluded that the conservative retainment of particular movement positions is primed by matrilineal tradition. The single adult bull consistently walked in the rear group of the moving mob. It was only during encounters with strange cattle that he temporarily took the leadership and actively hindered his animals from mixing with the other herd. Each kind of herd movement was preceded by a different leader cow who regularly walked on position No. 1. During voluntary movements the herd showed a certain dependency on its leader, and it was up to her to make the decision when to start moving away from one location and which direction to choose. In cow Alma spatial leadership was traced over a period of five years. Leadership showed no strict dependency on age or dominance.

Hair pulling: a review

Hair pulling has been reported in humans, six different non-human primate species, mice, guineapigs, rabbits, sheep and muskox, dogs and cats. This behaviour seems to occur only in subjects who are confined in an artificial environment. It has been classified as a mental disorder in humans, as a behavioural pathology in animals. The hair is not only pulled but also, in most species, ingested. Hair pulling can be both self-directed and partner-directed, contains elements of aggression, manifests more often in females than in males, is associated with psychogenic distress, and resists treatment. Research data collected from affected animals are probably not normative, hence scientifically unreliable. The preemptive correction of husbandry deficiencies causing long-term stress may prevent the development of this bizarre behaviour in healthy subjects.

Hair Pulling and Eating in Captive Rhesus Monkey Troops

Hair pulling and eating has not yet received attention in the nonhuman primate literature. Hair pulling and eating was recorded 388 times in two heterogeneous troops of healthy rhesus monkeys that were kept according to modern management practices. The behavior in question consists of the following sequence: pulling with the fingers (1/3 of cases) or with the teeth (2/3 of cases) tufts of hair from ones own or from a partners coat; chewing the hair and finally swallowing it; the undigested material is excreted in the feces. Hair pulling was almost exclusively (378/388) partner-directed. It was observed 364 times between animals whose dominance relationships were known; it was performed in 96% (349/364) of observations by a dominant but only in 4% (15/364) of observations by a subordinate monkey. The recipient of hair pulling showed typical fear and/or avoidance reactions. In both troops young animals (2-8 years of age) engaged in hair pulling and eating significantly more often than old animals (10-26 years of age). There was no evidence that nutritional, toxicological or climatic factors were responsible for the manifestation of this behavior. It was concluded that, similar to trichotillomania in man, wool pulling and eating in sheep and muskox, and feather picking in poultry, hair pulling and eating is an aggressive behavioral disorder in rhesus monkeys reflecting adjustment problems to a stressful environment.

Caged rhesus macaques voluntarily work for ordinary food.

Eight single-caged adult rhesus macaques were given the choice of freely collecting their standard food ration, i.e. 33 biscuits, from an ordinary food box or working for its retrieval from a custom-made food puzzle. During a one-hour observation session following the simultaneous distribution of biscuits in both feeders, individuals spent on average a total of 32 sec retrieving 29.0 biscuits from the food box, and 673 sec retrieving 11.3 biscuits from the food puzzle. It was inferred that the animals voluntarily worked for ordinary food, with the expression of foraging activities serving as its own reward.

Blood Collection Procedure of Laboratory Primates: A Neglected Variable in Biomedical Research

A survey of 75 biomedical articles dealing with stress-dependent blood parameters in caged primates revealed that the conditions under which blood collection occurred were in most cases described either not at all or so haphazardly that it would be impossible to determine if humane handling procedures were used and basic principles of scientific methodology applied. These findings were unexpected because there is ample scientific evidence not only that stress-sensitive research data are influenced by traditional blood sampling procedures, but also that those data-biasing effects can be avoided. If dependent variables of the blood collection procedure are not controlled, data variability will increase, automatically increasing the number of animals needed for statistical analysis. For ethical and scientific reasons, it was recommended that editors of biomedical journals require authors to provide sufficient information of the blood collection--and, when applicable, the sedative injection--procedure to ensure that the experiment was done with the smallest number of animals possible to achieve statistical significance and that the investigation can be replicated reliably in another laboratory and the research data interpreted with reasonable accuracy.

Does Intermale Mounting Function as a Dominance Demonstration in Rhesus Monkeys

The relationship between dominance and intermale mounting was analyzed in two troops of captive rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). The data did not support the assumption that mounting among males functions as a dominance demonstration as described in the literature because mounting commonly (63% of 65 dyads) occurred in a bidirectional fashion, and mounting not only was performed by dominant males but also was shown with regularity (36% of 521 cases) by subordinate males. Intermale mounting was often (37% of 521 cases) associated with amicable interactions--commonly preceding them--but it was only rarely (2%) associated with dominance-subordination behaviors. It was concluded that intermale mounting may serve as a socially cohesive behavior in rhesus monkeys by promoting nonagonistic contact.

Are male rhesus monkeys more aggressive than females

AbstractThe justification for the “generalization that primate males are more aggressive than females” (Fedigan & Baxter, 1984) was tested in a troop of 24 captive rhesus monkeys. Males (N=9) were more dominant than females (N=15), i.e., they had more subordinate partners (