Zebrafish have become a popular biomedical model in recent decades, and are now maintained in laboratories worldwide. However, living within a captive environment can introduce novel environmental stressors and experiencing stress chronically can negatively affect...
Reading another animal’s emotional state can enable receivers to anticipate their behavioural motivations, which is important in guiding interactions with that individual. For species living closely alongside humans, the emotional cues that we express can...
Fear of human can impact negatively offspring’s behaviour and cognition whereas early positive handling has positive impacts. The aim of this study was to evaluate the crossed effects of trans-generational transfer and familiarisation with human...
As a central key to apprehend the human-cat relationship, the question of how humans decode the behaviours expressed by their feline companions has drawn scientists’ attention in the past decades. To this point, previous studies...
In dogs, maternal behaviour plays an essential role in offspring survival and can influence the development and behaviour of the neonate later in life. We investigated the effect of prepartum enrichment on maternal behaviour and...
In order to be successful and have high standards of animal welfare, modern zoos strive to regularly modify, improve, and build animal enclosures and visitor areas. However, these periods of development could result in temporary...
It is important to examine the animal welfare implications of all aspects of zoo operations, including out-of-hours public events. Research to date has indicated variable responses across species and event types. The current research aimed...
Behavioral responses of captive animals to the presence of visitors in zoos and wildlife parks can be interpreted as signs of negative (disturbance), neutral or positive (enrichment) welfare. In the present study, we investigated behavioral...
A central question in the interspecific human/animal relationship is how domestic animals perceive humans as a significant element of their environment. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the use of positive or negative...
Visitor presence has been shown to affect the behavior of animals in zoos. However, studies to date have not included a wide range of taxonomic groupings, and thus, the effect is poorly understood for many...