Fear and other negative emotions.

Abstract

Concern for animal welfare stems from the recognition that animals are sentient beings capable of experiencing negative emotions, such as fear, pain and frustration. Fear is a major emotion in determining how animals perceive and respond to their social and physical environment. We tackle three main areas. Our first section on the assessment of fear embraces the diversity of frightening events and fear responses, various ways of assessing the fear state, the concept of fearfulness as related to temperament, and the need for stringent validation of tests and measures. Emotions are generally viewed as the result of how an individual evaluates a triggering situation according to its relevance, the likely consequences and the potential for control. Secondly, we review reported interactions between cognition and emotion and explore a possible role for cognitive ability in the assessment of emotional states: we ask whether fear-induced cognitive bias can be used to probe long-lasting affective states, and we examine the role of specific aspects, such as predictability and controllability. Thirdly, we revisit the damaging effects of fear and other negative emotions. Harmful consequences of intense and/or prolonged fear include health and welfare problems (withdrawal, injury, reduced immunocompetence, pathological anxiety), management problems (e.g. difficulty in handling and moving animals), as well as damaging effects on production, product quality and profitability. Finally, before concluding, we briefly mention the main ways of alleviating fear and the need for such strategies to be practical.

Pre-Exposure to an Electrical Stimulus Primes Associative Pairing of Audio and Electrical Stimuli for Dairy Heifers in a Virtual Fencing Feed Attractant Trial

“…For example, fearfulness (i.e., high emotional arousal to a challenging situation; Finkemeier et al [22]) is a feature of animal temperament [23][24][25] that has been associated with impaired learning in calves [26]. Fear can be induced by unpleasant events that are sudden, unfamiliar, unpredictable and inconsistent with expectations [27]. As such, startle tests have been used to measure underlying temperament as a fear response in dogs [28], calves [29,30] and horses [31].…”

Stress Assessment in Small Ruminants Kept on City Farms in Southern Germany

“…The results of our behavioral test imply that the sheep and goats in our study tended toward a neutral to slightly positive attitude toward humans, with few individuals being actually fearful (Hoy, 2009;Jones & Boissy, 2011;Waiblinger et al, 2006). The fact that most animals chose avoidance over aggressive reactions toward humans intruding on their personal space is positive, especially in the context of animal-assisted interventions.…”

“…As feeding is one of the main natural occupations for small ruminants, a general recommendation can be made to design husbandry systems and hay racks in a way to slow down feed intake to get the animals to spend more time there. The absence of abnormal behavior is an indicator that small ruminants in this study do not experience major compromises to their welfare (Gregory, 2004;Hoy, 2009;Jones & Boissy, 2011).…”

“…It has been proposed that chronic stressors can have immune-suppressing effects, which can lead to increased morbidity (Blache, Terlouw, & Maloney, 2011;Gregory, 2004;Jones & Boissy, 2011;Moberg, 2000). The small ruminants in this study are likely to live to old age in good health and be well cared for.…”

Animal welfare towards sustainability in pork meat production

“…The elicitation of injurious behaviours can also result in undesirable economic consequences, such as reduced productivity, product quality and profitability (Jones & Boissy, 2011).…”