Animal Welfare and Behavior Flashcards

A 4-year-old captive chimpanzee repeatedly rocks back and forth, self-grasps, and displays pica behavior. These stereotypies most likely indicate which underlying welfare concern?

Answer: Chronic psychological stress due to inadequate environmental enrichment and social deprivation

Stereotypies in non-human primates—repetitive, invariant behaviors with no apparent function—are hallmark indicators of chronic psychological stress, typically arising from inadequate environmental complexity, social isolation, or early maternal deprivation. Rocking, self-grasping, and pica are classic examples documented extensively in deprived laboratory and zoo primates. Viral encephalitis would present with additional neurological signs, and stereotypies are not considered normal developmental behavior.

When assessing pain in a domestic rabbit using validated scoring tools, which behavioral indicator is MOST specific to acute pain rather than fear or general stress?

Answer: Orbital tightening and whisker position change scored by the Rabbit Grimace Scale

The Rabbit Grimace Scale (RbtGS) is a validated, species-specific facial action coding tool that scores orbital tightening, cheek flattening, nose shape changes, whisker position, and ear position to quantify acute pain. Critically, facial grimace scales are more specific for pain than behavioral changes like freezing, thumping, or piloerection, which can be elicited by fear or general arousal. Orbital tightening and altered whisker position are the most reliably pain-specific components.

A poultry facility notices that feather-pecking behavior increases dramatically after introducing red-spectrum lighting over infrared lighting. The most accurate mechanistic explanation is:

Answer: Red lighting impairs the ability of birds to visually discriminate wounds from feathers, removing a negative feedback inhibitor of pecking

Chickens have tetrachromatic vision and can detect blood (red) against feathers under broad-spectrum or white lighting, which triggers and perpetuates feather-pecking once wounds appear. Red-spectrum lighting reduces the contrast between wounds and feathers in the birds' visual system, thereby removing the visual cue that sustains pecking. Infrared (dim red) lighting is therefore recommended to reduce feather-pecking, not because of corticosterone or fixed action patterns, but due to this perceptual masking effect.

In the Five Domains Model of Animal Welfare, which domain is considered most integrationally distinct from the original Five Freedoms framework and why?

Answer: The Mental domain, because it explicitly incorporates subjective affective states rather than only external conditions

The Five Domains Model (Mellor & Reid, 1994; updated by Mellor 2017) extends the Five Freedoms by adding a fifth integrative domain—Mental state (or affect)—that explicitly captures the animal's subjective experience arising from the other four functional domains (Nutrition, Environment, Health, Behavior). This is a fundamental conceptual departure from the Five Freedoms, which addressed external conditions without formally representing internal affective states. The other domains have structural parallels in the Five Freedoms.

A shelter dog consistently passes stranger approach tests but fails when a stranger reaches over its head rather than presenting a hand for sniffing. This behavioral pattern is best characterized as:

Answer: Context-specific defensiveness triggered by a supranormal postural threat cue, indicating incomplete generalization of habituation

Reaching over the head is a high-magnitude threat signal in canine ethology (looming overhead posture mimics dominant or predatory approach). The dog's successful performance on standard approach tests but failure on the overhead reach indicates that habituation or socialization did not generalize across all relevant stimulus configurations—a phenomenon called context-specificity or incomplete stimulus generalization. This is not a generalized anxiety disorder (which would affect multiple contexts) nor classical conditioning to hands per se, as the hands-from-below cue was tolerated.

Under the USDA Animal Welfare Act regulations, which of the following species is explicitly EXCLUDED from the definition of 'animal' for purposes of coverage, even when used in biomedical research?

Answer: Mus musculus (laboratory mice) bred for research

The U.S. Animal Welfare Act (AWA) explicitly excludes birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus bred for use in research from its definition of 'animal' under 7 U.S.C. § 2132(g). This exclusion, formalized in 2002 via the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act amendment, means laboratory mice (Mus musculus) bred for research receive no federal AWA protections. Ferrets, rhesus macaques, and rabbits are all covered AWA species.