4,827 research outputs found
Leadership and Path Characteristics during Walks Are Linked to Dominance Order and Individual Traits in Dogs
Movement interactions and the underlying social structure in groups have relevance across many social-living species. Collective motion of groups could be based on an âegalitarianâ decision system, but in practice it is often influenced by underlying social network structures and by individual characteristics. We investigated whether dominance rank and personality traits are linked to leader and follower roles during joint motion of family dogs. We obtained high-resolution spatio-temporal GPS trajectory data (823,148 data points) from six dogs belonging to the same household and their owner during 14 30â40 min unleashed walks. We identified several features of the dogs' paths (e.g., running speed or distance from the owner) which are characteristic of a given dog. A directional correlation analysis quantifies interactions between pairs of dogs that run loops jointly. We found that dogs play the role of the leader about 50â85% of the time, i.e. the leader and follower roles in a given pair are dynamically interchangable. However, on a longer timescale tendencies to lead differ consistently. The network constructed from these loose leaderâfollower relations is hierarchical, and the dogs' positions in the network correlates with the age, dominance rank, trainability, controllability, and aggression measures derived from personality questionnaires. We demonstrated the possibility of determining dominance rank and personality traits of an individual based only on its logged movement data. The collective motion of dogs is influenced by underlying social network structures and by characteristics such as personality differences. Our findings could pave the way for automated animal personality and human social interaction measurements
Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
Dominance is well defined in ethology, debated in psychology, and is often unclear among the dog owning public and in the press. However, to date, no study has examined how owners perceive dominance in dogs, and what different behaviours and personality types are used to describe dominant and subordinate individuals. A questionnaire study was launched to investigate the external validity of owner-derived estimates of dominance in dog dyads sharing the same household (N = 1,151). According to the owners, dogs rated as dominant (87%) have priority access to resources (resting place, food, and rewards), undertake certain tasks (defend and lead the group, bark more), display dominance (win fights, lick the otherâs mouth less, and mark over the otherâs urine), share certain personality traits (smarter, more aggressive and impulsive), and are older than their partner dog (all p < 0.0001). An age-related hypothesis has been suggested to explain dominance in dogs; but we found that dog age did not explain the occurrence of dominance related behaviours over the ownersâ estimate of dominance status. Results suggest that owner-derived reports of dominance ranks of dogs living in multi-dog households correspond to ethologically valid behavioural markers of dominance. Size and physical condition were unrelated to the perceived dominance. Surprisingly, in mixed-sex dyads, females were more frequently rated as dominant than males, which might correspond to a higher proportion of neutered females in this subgroup. For future studies that wish to allocate dominance status using owner report, we offer a novel survey
Discrete modes of social information processing predict individual behavior of fish in a group
Individual computations and social interactions underlying collective
behavior in groups of animals are of great ethological, behavioral, and
theoretical interest. While complex individual behaviors have successfully been
parsed into small dictionaries of stereotyped behavioral modes, studies of
collective behavior largely ignored these findings; instead, their focus was on
inferring single, mode-independent social interaction rules that reproduced
macroscopic and often qualitative features of group behavior. Here we bring
these two approaches together to predict individual swimming patterns of adult
zebrafish in a group. We show that fish alternate between an active mode in
which they are sensitive to the swimming patterns of conspecifics, and a
passive mode where they ignore them. Using a model that accounts for these two
modes explicitly, we predict behaviors of individual fish with high accuracy,
outperforming previous approaches that assumed a single continuous computation
by individuals and simple metric or topological weighing of neighbors behavior.
At the group level, switching between active and passive modes is uncorrelated
among fish, yet correlated directional swimming behavior still emerges. Our
quantitative approach for studying complex, multi-modal individual behavior
jointly with emergent group behavior is readily extensible to additional
behavioral modes and their neural correlates, as well as to other species
The Youngest, the Heaviest and/or the Darkest? Selection Potentialities and Determinants of Leadership in Canarian Dromedary Camels
Several idiosyncratic and genetically correlated traits are known to extensively influence leadership in both domestic and wild species. For minor livestock such as camels, however, this type of behavior remains loosely defined and approached only for sex-mixed herds. The interest in knowing those animal-dependent variables that make an individual more likely to emerge as a leader in a single-sex camel herd has its basis in the sex-separated breeding of Canarian dromedary camels for utilitarian purposes. By means of an ordinal logistic regression, it was found that younger, gelded animals may perform better when eliciting the joining of mates, assuming that they were castrated just before reaching sexual maturity and once they were initiated in the pertinent domestication protocol for their lifetime functionality. The higher the body weight, the significantly (p < 0.05) higher the score in the hierarchical rank when leading group movements, although this relationship appeared to be inverse for the other considered zoometric indexes. Camels with darker and substantially depigmented coats were also significantly (p < 0.05) found to be the main initiators. Routine intraherd management and leisure tourism will be thus improved in efficiency and security through the identification and selection of the best leader camels
A comparison of personality traits of gifted word learner and typical border collies
While personality and cognition are distinct domains, some personality traits may affect the capacity for problem-solving. It was suggested that there is a positive association between the Playfulness trait and problem-solving performance in humans. Studies on giftedness (extremely good capacity in the case of a specific skill), typically aimed to reveal the genetic, experiential, and mental origins of such extreme inter-individual variation. We exploited recent findings on giftedness in a specific cognitive skill, object label learning, in dogs to explore the potential association between this exceptional skill and personality traits. We administered the Dog Personality Questionnaire to 21 gifted dog owners and compared the personality traits of their dogs to those of matched samples of 43 Hungarian and 101 Austrian typical dogs, i.e., dogs lacking this exceptional capacity. Since most Gifted Word Learner dogs are Border collies, we restricted our analysis to dogs of this breed. We hypothesized that the Gifted Word Learner dogs may show higher levels of Playfulness. As expected, we found that the gifted Border collies were rated as more playful than both the Hungarian and Austrian typical ones. Our results suggest that an extremely high level of Playfulness is associated with giftedness in a specific cognitive trait in dogs: the capacity to learn object verbal labels, thus opening new possibilities for comparative research on the relationship between giftedness and personality
Modeling the emergence of modular leadership hierarchy during the collective motion of herds made of harems
Gregarious animals need to make collective decisions in order to keep their
cohesiveness. Several species of them live in multilevel societies, and form
herds composed of smaller communities. We present a model for the development
of a leadership hierarchy in a herd consisting of loosely connected sub-groups
(e.g. harems) by combining self organization and social dynamics. It starts
from unfamiliar individuals without relationships and reproduces the emergence
of a hierarchical and modular leadership network that promotes an effective
spreading of the decisions from more capable individuals to the others, and
thus gives rise to a beneficial collective decision. Our results stemming from
the model are in a good agreement with our observations of a Przewalski horse
herd (Hortob\'agy, Hungary). We find that the harem-leader to harem-member
ratio observed in Przewalski horses corresponds to an optimal network in this
approach regarding common success, and that the observed and modeled harem size
distributions are close to a lognormal.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, J. Stat. Phys. (2014
Current perspectives on attachment and bonding in the dogâhuman dyad
This article reviews recent research concerning dogâhuman relationships and how attributes that arise from them can be measured. It highlights the influence of human characteristics on dog behavior, and consequently, the dogâhuman bond. Of particular importance are the influences of human attitudes and personality. These themes have received surprisingly little attention from researchers. Identifying human attributes that contribute to successful dogâ human relationships could assist in the development of a behavioral template to ensure dyadic potential is optimized. Additionally, this article reveals how dyadic functionality and working performance may not necessarily be mutually inclusive. Potential underpinnings of various dogâ human relationships and how these may influence dogsâ perceptions of their handlers are also discussed. The article considers attachment bonds between humans and dogs, how these may potentially clash with or complement each other, and the effects of different bonds on the dogâ human dyad as a whole. We review existing tools designed to measure the dogâhuman bond and offer potential refinements to improve their accuracy. Positive attitudes and affiliative interactions seem to contribute to the enhanced well-being of both species, as reflected in resultant physiological changes. Thus, promoting positive dogâhuman relationships would capitalize on these benefits, thereby improving animal welfare. Finally, this article proposes future research directions that may assist in disambiguating what constitutes successful bonding between dogs and the humans in their lives
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