ISSN 2348-313X (Print) International Journal of Life Sciences Research ISSN 2348-3148 (online) Vol. 8, Issue 4, pp: (61-69), Month: October - December 2020, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
Cognitive Ability in Four Breeds of Domestic Sheep Mohammed Umar Ali1 Department of Animal Health & Production Technology Federal Polytechnic Bali, Nigeria
Abstract: Understanding cognition, the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment is important because it can provide insight into animal’s affective and welfare state. In farm animals it may have links to production parameters of value but for this possibility to be explored cognitive ability have to be first established in the animals. Four breeds of sheep (n=15/breed) were subjected to two operant learning tasks using visual stimuli in an operant system to test their cognitive abilities in two experiments. Data on the response time, response time during right (I-R) and left (I-L) screen image presentations, number first time correct choice and number of corrections required to complete the task were collected and subjected to ANOVA. In experiment I, significant differences (p<0.01) in response time was found between breeds and also during right or left screen image presentations. However in experiment II, there was no significant difference between breeds in response time to complete task. Suffolk ewes made significantly (p<0.05) higher number of accurate responses and required fewer corrections in completing the task than the other breeds. There was also significant differences between sessions in response times, accurate responses, and corrections required to complete the task. The results demonstrate that ewes of the four breeds can master the cognitive task over time albeit at different rates. Tests of cognition in livestock may have application in animal welfare, but more systematic studies are needed to explore possible links with production traits. Keywords: cognitive ability, breed, stimulus, learning task.
1. INTRODUCTION It is becoming increasingly important to study animal cognition for a variety of reasons. The most obvious ones are psychology, medicine and lately animal welfare. Human psychiatry and neurology research is reliant animal models to study a plethora of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Common animals used in medical research are rodents [1], [5], [24], [13] and non-human primates [22]. However rats and mice do not make ideal experimental subjects to study brain disorders in humans firstly because they are short-lived but also because they have dissimilar brain architecture with humans [14]. While monkeys do similar brains to humans, their management is not as routine as that of farm animals and their size will make them too cumbersome to manage under laboratory conditions if it were to come down with the clinical symptoms of neurological disease such as Huntington’s or Alzheimer’s. There are also ethical issues that might be raised in dealing with non-human primates. People’s attitude to animals are affected by their evaluations of the animal’s abilities [3]. If people perceive animals stupid and unaware, they are more likely to treat such animals as objects rather than as individuals with possible consequences for physical and mental aspects of needs, or feelings such as pain, fear, pleasure and environmental stress. As non-verbal beings, it is pertinent to device other means of gaining insight in to how animals feel in the different farm conditions for us to be able to improve their welfare [12]. Recently, animal cognition is found to be useful as an indirect method of assessing their welfare [12]. Studies [2] suggest that animal emotion and cognition have a bi-directional relationship implying that emotive states of animals can be deciphered by measuring their cognitive states. Sheep have credentials that make them suitable for studying cognitive functions. They are long-lived, unlike rodent and have large brains with similar morphology to that of humans, a human like basal ganglia and a welldeveloped and convoluted cerebral cortices [7], an impressive ability to remember the faces of others for up to two years [8], suggesting potentials for learning and memory. Despite this remarkable similarity to the human brain, studies to characterize cognitive functions in the sheep are lacking and would be essential if their emotions and welfare state are to be understood. Studying cognition in sheep may possibly allow for indirect selection of production traits to improve livestock if cognitive ability have correlation with a particular trait. Links between productions and behavioral traits have been demonstrated in previous studies. Findings by Kilgour & Szantar-Coddington [9] suggest that fear, a behavioral trait,
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