Can donkey behavior and cognition be used to trace back, explain, or forecast moon cycle and weather events?
Navas González, Francisco Javier (Universidad de Córdoba. Departamento de Genética)
Jordana i Vidal, Jordi (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments)
Pizarro Inostroza, Gabriela (Universidad de Córdoba. Departamento de Genética)
Arando Arbulu, Ander (Universidad de Córdoba. Departamento de Genética)
Delgado Bermejo, Juan Vicente (Universidad de Córdoba. Departamento de Genética)

Date:	2018
Abstract:	Donkeys have been reported to be highly sensitive to environmental changes. Their 8900-8400-year-old evolution process made them interact with diverse environmental situations that were very distant from their harsh origins. These changing situations not only affect donkeys' short-term behavior but may also determine their long-term cognitive skills from birth. Thus, animal behavior becomes a useful tool to obtain past, present or predict information from the environmental situation of a particular area. We performed an operant conditioning test on 300 donkeys to assess their response type, mood, response intensity, and learning capabilities, while we simultaneously registered 14 categorical environmental factors. We quantified the effect power of such environmental factors on donkey behavior and cognition. We used principal component analysis (CATPCA) to reduce the number of factors affecting each behavioral variable and built categorical regression (CATREG) equations to model for the effects of potential factor combinations. Effect power ranged from 7. 9% for the birth season on learning (p < 0. 05) to 38. 8% for birth moon phase on mood (p < 0. 001). CATPCA suggests the percentage of variance explained by a four-dimension-model (comprising the dimensions of response type, mood, response intensity and learning capabilities), is 75. 9%. CATREG suggests environmental predictors explain 28. 8% of the variability of response type, 37. 0% of mood, and 37. 5% of response intensity, and learning capabilities.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Cognition ; Cold Wave ; Learning abilities ; Lunar phases ; Meteorological conditions
Published in:	Animals, Vol. 8 Núm. 11 (2018) , p. 215, ISSN 2076-2615

DOI: 10.3390/ani8110215
PMID: 30463193

26 p, 3.3 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles