Quantifying animals' perception of environmental predictability using anticipatory behavior

Abstract

Animals under human care often experience predictable daily husbandry events, which can promote the development of anticipatory behavior. Previous research suggests even short delays in the arrival of a predictable, desired outcome can lead to negative welfare outcomes for animals. As such, providing reliable information to animals regarding the onset of important events may be a simple but useful method to support positive welfare. Here we evaluated the quantitative characteristics of anticipatory behavior of a California sea lion at the San Francisco Zoo in three situations (1) when the animal had accurate information about the occurrence of the event (temporally predictable training sessions), (2) when the information was semi‐reliable (unscheduled training session), and (3) when a reliable signal was offered before unscheduled sessions. Results showed that providing a reliable cue resulted in a stronger temporal correlation of anticipation before the beginning of the unscheduled session, similar to the temporally predictable training session. However, providing a reliable cue did not reduce the intensity of the anticipatory behavior. We propose to take into account two aspects of the quantitative characteristics of anticipatory behavior: correlation with time until a desired event (correlation) and intensity, where the correlation indicates the ability of an individual animal to predict the occurrence of an event, and the intensity indicates the degree of sensitivity of the animal to reward. We discuss the implications for animal welfare and husbandry.

Overnight monitoring reveals the behavioral rhythms of a geriatric male elephant: an animal-centered case study of rest and stereotypy

“…Given the schedule of this elephant's stereotypic swaying (with a high prevalence in the hours just before caretakers arrive for the day), there is a strong possibility that this behavior is anticipatory in nature (Krebs et al, 2022). In prolonging the possibility of food-and also providing smaller amounts of food at each feeding opportunity as a result-we may have inadvertently removed an otherwise reliable cue of a desired consequence, thereby increasing anticipation across a longer period of the night (Podturkin et al, 2023).…”