Early recognition of newborn goat kids by their mother: I. Nonolfactory discrimination

Abstract

Mother sheep and goats develop an early bond with their neonate on the basis of olfactory recognition. We investigated whether goats were also able to show early (<24 hr postpartum) nonolfactory discrimination of their kids, as already reported in sheep. In a first experiment, we found that goats are not able to recognize their kid at 1 m away on the basis of olfactory cues alone. By contrast, they showed a significant preference for their own kid in a two-choice test as early as 4 hr postpartum, and prepartum maternal anosmia did not impede the ability of mothers to show discrimination. We conclude that goats, like sheep, are fully able to discriminate their neonate without the help of olfactory cues very early after parturition. The difference in the early spatial mother-young relationship between the two species due to the different behavior of the young (kids = hiders, lambs = followers), is not associated with marked differences in the dynamics or mechanisms controlling the development of recognition of the neonate by its mother.

Preference of 12-h-old kids for their mother goat is impaired by pre-partum-induced anosmia in the mother

“…The possibility that some differences in breed exist between the dwarf African goat and the type of goats we used is also supported by the response of the animals to separation. Indeed, both in the present experiment and in a previous study of the recognition of the kid by the mother in the same type of goats (Poindron et al, 2003), animals were highly responsive to the testing situation, despite the fact that mothers and kids had been separated from each other only for a few minutes before the test. In contrast, in the studies of Addae et al (2000) and Awotwi et al (2000), animals did not display sufficient motivation in the test with less than 2 h of separation.…”

“…It is important to note that in the present paper, maternal selectivity refers specifically to this aspect of maternal recognition, which relies on maternal olfaction. Indeed, while anosmic ewes and goats are able to recognise their young in a two-choice tests by sight and/or hearing, they do not display rejection behaviours towards alien young that intent to suck (Ferreira et al, 2000;Poindron et al, 2003;Lé vy et al, 2004). Also, it is important to note that in the present study, in all cases the kids had full access to visual, acoustic and olfactory cues from the dams.…”

“…It cannot be excluded that the same applies in goats, especially since Addae et al (2000) suggested that mothers of the breed they studied had poor learning abilities. Indeed, they found that recognition was not clearly established before 48 h post partum, whereas in a recent study using a similar testing situation we found that crossbred dairy-type goats already recognised their kids at 4 h post partum (Poindron et al, 2003). Therefore, we investigated whether 8-, 12-and 24-h-old kids displayed a preference for their mother in a two-choice test and, if so, whether this initial preference depended on differences in maternal selective behaviour between the own and the alien dam, as reported in sheep .…”

“…Studies concerning the discrimination of the kid by its dam have shown that the mechanisms involved are similar to those found in sheep (Romeyer et al, 1993(Romeyer et al, , 1994a(Romeyer et al, and 1994bPoindron et al, 2003). In contrast, it is not known whether the hiding behaviour of kids is associated with marked differences in their discrimination abilities compared with that of lambs.…”

Mechanisms of activation of maternal behaviour in mammals

“…Here again, this learning is modulated by maternal physiological factors such as delivery of the foetus and the resulting liberation of some neurotransmitters. Finally, recent results indicate that the ease for this learning process by internal factors is probably not limited to olfaction, since recent results obtained in the ewe and goat have shown visual and/or auditory recognition in the young, 6 hours or less after parturition [36,37].…”