Animals in Translation (46 page)

Pain-Motivated Behavior

Examples

• An arthritic dog reduces activity. Treating the arthritis will result in a more active dog.
  
• An animal limps after an injury.
  
• A dog hit by a car bites a person.
  
• An animal stands still or lies hunched up after surgery.
  
• A cat with a urinary tract problem eliminates outside the litter box. Medical problems are the cause of 30 percent of cat elimination problems.
  
• A dog stays away from the boundary of an invisible fence to avoid a shock.
  
• A dog bites after a child has repeatedly pulled its ear.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• Never punish pain-motivated behavior caused by a medical problem or an injury.
  
• Fear or rage motivation is sometimes confused with pain motivation. Pain-related aggression is most likely to occur in direct response to manipulation of a sore body part.
  
• Animals will avoid places or activities that are associated with painful stimuli.
  
• When an injured dog bites a person he is less likely to develop a biting problem compared to a dog motivated by aggression or fear to bite.
  
• Prey species animals such as cattle, sheep, and horses cover up pain-related behavior when people are watching. They do this in the wild to avoid being eaten be predators.
  
• Research shows that painkilling medications and local anesthetics are effective in animals and they should be used during and after surgery.
  
• Pain-related behaviors are likely to be most evident when an animal is watched with a video camera with no people around.
  

Novelty-Seeking Behavior

Examples

• A dog runs excitedly from room to room to smell all the new smells in a strange house.
  
• A horse approaches a flag on a pasture because he is attracted to both the flapping movement and the contrasting color that is different from that of the pasture.
  
• A pig roots vigorously in a fresh bale of straw or excitedly chews up a paper bag thrown in its pen.
  
• A horse points his ears toward a novel sound such as a beeping horn.
  
• A monkey in a laboratory presses a button many times each day to open a door so he can get a brief look outside his cage.
  
• Cattle in a pasture watch construction crews building a bridge.
  
• Brahman cattle nose a coat hanging on a fence, while Hereford cattle ignore it.
  

Novelty Avoidance Behavior (Fear-Motivated)

Examples

• A dog panics at a fireworks show.
  
• Cattle accustomed to cowboys on horseback panic when they first see a person on foot. The cattle perceive the person on foot as a novel new scary thing.
  
• A horse rears at a show when he sees balloons and flags.
  
• A cat panics when he sees a dog for the first time. His hair will stand on end and he will hiss and scratch.
  
• Cattle who were calm and tame at the home ranch ram fences and charge people at an auction.
  
• A horse who has not become habituated to bikes, balloons, and flags at home is more likely to get scared of these and rear at a horse show.
  
• An antelope at the zoo panics and crashes into the fence when she sees roofers on top of her barn. The roofers are perceived as novel, but people standing around the exhibit are tolerated because they are no longer novel.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• New novel things are most frightening when they are introduced suddenly, such as an umbrella opening in an animal's face.
  
• New things are attractive if the animal can voluntarily approach them.
  
• Allow a horse to approach and sniff a new saddle.
  
• The paradox of novelty: new things are both the most attractive and the most feared things to animals with flighty, nervous, high-strung genetics. An Arab horse is more likely to spook if a flag is suddenly waved in his face. But he would be more likely than a horse with calmer genetics to approach a flag placed in the middle of a large pasture.
  
• All animals should be gradually introduced to many new things and new places to prevent panic when they travel to a new place.
  
• New things must be introduced more slowly to nervous, high-strung animals than to calmer animals to avoid panic and fear. Some examples of new things that frighten animals are: a person on a horse's back, a trailer, a balloon, flags, bikes, a garage door opening quickly, or a costume for a horse show.
  
• High-strung, nervous animals are more aware of new things in their environment.
  
• Horses and cattle are likely to be afraid of novel things that have erratic, rapid movements such as flags and balloons. Dogs are likely to develop a fear of loud noise.
  
• Animal memories are specific. A horse perceives a person on his back and a person on the ground as two different things.
  

Hunger-Motivated Behavior

Examples

• An animal is trained to perform a new behavior to gain a food reward.
  
• Animals come in from the pasture at feeding time.
  
• Lionesses teach their cubs how to hunt and what to eat.
  
• A cat comes running when he hears the can opener opening his food.
  
• A dolphin learns to present his tail for blood sampling voluntarily in exchange for a food reward.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• In order for an animal to make the association between a food reward and a desired behavior the food must be given within one second after the desired behavior occurs.
  
• The advantage of either
  target training
  or
  clicker training
  is that it is much easier to use the correct timing for the reward. The animal associates the click of a handheld clicker with food. When target training is used, the animal learns to associate either touching or following a short stick with a ball on the end with a food reward. Many good books are available that give step-by-step instructions on how to clicker-train or target-train.
  
• Grazing animals prefer the forages they ate when they were young.
  
• Prey chasing and killing behavior is not always food-motivated. Young animals are taught what to hunt by their mothers. Both dogs and lions must learn that the things they kill are good to eat.
  

Examples of Sex-Motivated Behavior

Examples

• Normal mating behavior such as copulation.
  
• Intact male dogs congregate on the doorstep of the house where there is a female dog in estrus.
  
• A dog “humps” a person's leg.
  
• A male bird performs a mating display toward a person and refuses to mate with his own species. He will strut and fan out his tail feathers.
  
• A stallion is overly aggressive during mating and will suddenly rush and mount a mare without greeting her first.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• Neutering animals before puberty will prevent many sexually motivated behaviors later in life.
  
• Animals who are neutered when mature often keep some adult sexual
  behaviors. For example: male cats neutered as adults continue to spray chairs and walls.
  
• Abnormal sexual behavior can be prevented by raising young animals in social groups with their own species.
  
• Animals will often attempt to breed with the individuals who raised them.
  
• Single-trait breeding for production or appearance traits such as large muscles can sometimes cause abnormal sexual behavior such as a rooster who injures hens during mating because the normal courting behavior has been bred out.
  
• Keeping young male animals in isolation may result in abnormal, overly aggressive mating behavior. Young animals need to learn social rules from adult animals of their own species.
  

Hardwired Instinctual Behavior, or Fixed Action Patterns

Examples

• The following behaviors listed in previous sections are hardwired: male cat spraying, normal copulation behaviors, prey chase drive, and bird mating dances.
  
• Species-specific dominance display behavior such as a broadside threat from a bull or dominance posture in dogs is a fixed action pattern. The dog has an erect posture with staring eyes, ears forward, and hackles raised on its back.
  
• Dogs have a natural instinct to avoid messing in their sleeping area. This is why putting a puppy in its crate helps to housebreak the puppy.
  
• A chick raised by people performs its mating dance to a person. The mating dance is instinctual but the sign stimulus that turns it on is learned.
  
• A dominant pig who bites people becomes submissive after a human shoves a board against the neck area where another dominant pig would bite. This approach is effective because it imitates the instinctual fighting behavior of the dominant pig. Slapping the pig on her hindquarters is not effective because it does not imitate the instinctual fighting behavior of a pig.
  Exerting dominance does not mean beating an animal into submission. Exerting dominance means using the animal's natural method of communication
  .
  
• Prey drive in dogs is triggered by the sign stimulus of rapid movement. This is why dogs chase cars and joggers.
  
• A dog performs the killing bite to a squirrel's neck.
  
• Nursing and sucking in infant animals are fixed action patterns. The sign stimulus that triggers nursing is an object placed in the infant's mouth. Calves will suck on a person's finger.
  
• A submissive dog rolls over in front of a dominant dog to stop him from attacking. The submissive dog voluntarily rolls over and is not pushed down by the dominant dog. When you are establishing dominance over a dog, teach him to roll over on his back using food and social rewards. Do not throw the dog down.
  
• A dog's bowing “let's play” posture is a fixed action pattern. The dog lowers his front end and his rear remains elevated.
  
• Egg retrieval behavior in geese is a fixed action pattern. A mother goose will retrieve any egg-sized object that rolls out of her nest. She will retrieve golf balls or cans along with her eggs.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• A fixed action pattern is hardwired into the brain and runs like a computer program.
  
• The fixed action pattern is turned on when it is released by a sign stimulus.
  
• Hormones will activate sexual fixed action patterns in mature animals.
  
• Other fixed action patterns, such as nursing or the play bow in dogs, are not influenced by hormonal cycles.
  
• In some species people can easily imitate aspects of the fixed action patterns to exert dominance over an animal. Raising a stick over your head to imitate the raised antler display of an elk is an example.
  

Behavior with Mixed Motivations

Examples

• Fear versus novelty seeking: Cattle approach a paper bag lying on the ground and jump back when the wind moves it.
  
• Sex versus fear: A dog smells a female in estrus and keeps approaching the female even when another dominant dog chases him off repeatedly. Sex starts the approach behavior and fear of the dominant dog makes him retreat when he gets too close.
  
• Fear versus instinctual maternal behavior: A young female dog is scared when she sees her first puppy but the fear disappears when the puppies begin nursing.
  
• Fear versus aggression: A mother defending her newborn babies may alternate between aggression and fear.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• In some cases, such as fear versus novelty and sex versus fear, the behavior may alternate between two or more conflicting motivators. In other cases, such as the new mother who initially fears her puppies but nurtures them once nursing has begun, the initial motivation is replaced by the competing motivation.
  
• Mixed motivations are sometimes hard to decipher. Making a list of the observed behaviors may help.
  

Environmentally Caused Abnormal Behavior

Examples

• Young puppies reared in barren kennels are more hyper and excitable compared to puppies raised with more social interaction with people.
  
• A parrot who lacks social companionship pulls out its feathers.
  
• Cribbing in horses (repetitively biting on a fence).
  
• Bar biting by sows in stalls where there is no straw or dirt available for rooting and chewing.
  
• Pacing in zoo animals kept in a small cage.
  
• Dog licks excessively and causes a sore on its paw. Often due to separation anxiety.
  
• Mice kept in barren wire cages will pace and circle. This most likely to occur when nobody is near them at night, because the activity of people around them attracts their attention. The abnormal behavior begins when there is little external stimulation from the environment.
  

Principles of Troubleshooting

• It is important to prevent these behaviors from starting because they are difficult to stop after they are established. Abnormal behaviors are most likely to occur in barren cages that contain no materials to manipulate, or when animals are raised in isolation.
  
• In barren environments, high-strung nervous animals are more likely to develop
  stereotypies
  —behaviors that the animal repeats over and over again—compared to calm, placid animals. Pacing, circling, bar biting, and cribbing are all examples of stereotypies.
  
• An animal's environmental needs depend on the species. Highly social animals such as dogs and horses need the companionship of other animals or people. Grazing animals such as horses and cattle need hay or grass. Burrowing animals such as rodents need materials to burrow and hide in. Animals who walk long distances such as polar bears and tigers need room to roam.
  
• The nervous system of young animals reared in barren kennels or laboratory cages may be damaged because the growing nervous system needs varied sensory input to develop normally.
  
• Some of the most abnormal behaviors that occur in barren environments are performed when the animal is undisturbed by people. When people enter the animals stop doing the abnormal behavior. Video cameras used for security systems are an inexpensive method for detecting abnormal behavior.
  

Genetically Caused Abnormal Behavior

Examples

• A dog suddenly bites for no reason due to
  psychomotor epilepsy
  . This condition first appeared in springer spaniels who were bred to have hyper-alert posture. The bite will come out of the blue and is not related to a particular person or place.
  
• A deaf, blue-eyed dog is hyper-excitable.
  
• A hyper-excitable high-producing egg layer hen beats her feathers off by flapping her wings against her cage.
  
• Roosters bred for large breasts sometimes kill hens during mating. They have lost their normal hardwired instinctual courtship behavior due to single trait breeding.
  
• Goats who have epileptic seizures and faint when they hear a loud noise.
  
• A hyper Dalmatian is difficult to train.
  
• Nervous pointer dogs who get frozen in the pointing posture. If pushed, they will tip over.