Assessing Stress and Welfare Flashcards
(22 cards)
What is welfare?
Animal’s collective physical, mental, and emotional states over a period of time and is measured on a continuum from good to poor
What determines whether an animal would be said to have good welfare?
- free of chronic stress
- environment promotes positive affect states
- allows for expression of natural behaviors, including social interaction and play for social species
What are measures for assessing stress and welfare in animals?
- endocrine measures
- cardivascular measures
- immune measures
- behavioral measures
What is the HPA axis?
It gets activated to produce cortisol when stress is present. The hypothalamus releases corticotropin releasing hormone & vasopressin onto the anterior pituitary gland. This results in the APG to release adreno-corticotropin hormone (ACTH) onto the adrenal gland which will release cortisol into the blood.
this process has a negative feedback loop
How does stress or glucocorticoid levels affect learning?
Cortisol levels doesn’t let us know whether it is good or bad stress, but we see that learning is improves and falls like a hill. There will be impaired learning at low stress then it will improve going into medium levels of stress, but then fall back down when moving towards higher levels of stress.
stress is referring to cortisol levels
What are the possible variables other than psychosocial stress that can influence cortisol levels?
- exercise - increase
- cold-temperatures - increase
- diurnal fluctuations - peaks in morning
- individual differences - different baselines
again cortisol doesn’t tell us whether it is eustress or distress
How can using cortisol as a measure of stress/welfare can be problematic? How can we improve this?
- challenging to get consistent signal
- use as one measure among many
- within-subject studies better than group studies - individuals are their own control (less individual differences)
Cortisol Measure: Salivary cortisol
Benefits and limitations
- can’t give meat as this will affect levels
- more invasive
- typically view that salivary cortisol relfects 30 mins prior
- useful for acute stressors
Cortisol Measure: Urinary cortisol
Benefits and limitations
- relatively non-invasive
- reflect period longer than salivary cortisol
- thought to be since last urination
- has to be corrected for dilution
- better measure than saliva since it is longer window of stress
Cortisol Measure: Fecal cortisol
Benefits and limitations
- non-invasive
- less variability than saliva
- longer period of cortisol
- delay of 10-12 hours change in blood cortisol levels
Cortisol Measure: Hair/fur cortisol
Benefits and limitations
- relatively non-invasive
- less variability than saliva
- useful for long-term assessment of stress
- variation between hair color
How do shelter dogs’ cortisol levels compare to owned dogs?
- higher than dogs living in their home
- there is a large variation between average cortisol levels across shelters suggesting that husbandry and housing practices impact welfare significantly
Other physiological measures for stress
How does hormonal/neurotransmitter levels correlate with welfare?
- B-endorphin - increased levels associated with analgesia, positive states
- dopamine - increased levels associated with pleasure
- **oxytocin **- social bonding hormone, measured when assessing social interactions, increased = positive
- serotonin (urinary) - up for debate, increase but diurnal fluctuations
Other physiological measures for stress
How does blood pressure levels correlate with welfare?
high blood pressure has correlation with poor welfare where lower has mixed results, but a stable blood pressure correlates with good welfare
can be taken near base of tail
Other physiological measures for stress
How does heart rate variability levels correlate with welfare?
- decreased HRV occurs during physically or psychologically stressful events - indicates less able to adapt to environment factors
- increased HRV indicates better welfare
popular measure
Immune Funcitoning
What is secretory immunoglobulin A (S-IgA)?
- main function - immune exclusion (captures microbes and gets rid of them), neutralizes viruses, toxins and prevents penetration of microrganism to the mucosal epithelium
- collected from saliva or feces
How does immune function correlate with behavior in shelter dogs?
- can reflect both stress levels and immune functioning
- chronic stress (cortisol) decreases S-IgA
- bad welfare can increase an animals chance of contracting disease and severity of disease
How does the length of stay in the shelter correlate with contraction of illness?
Longer time –> more stressors –> more contraction/ more susceptible
Dogs like are more social are blank likely to be prone to illness.
more - more contact with pathogens, more curiosity
How does activity monitors help assess welfare?
- can track activity, position temperature, monitor for abnormailties or changes
When might it be more useful to use behavioral measures?
- not feasible to collect physiological data
- there are behaviors that are problematic that do not necesarily correlate with cortisol
What is the effect of sleepovers on activity?
There was a signicant increase in rest during the sleepover as well as after the sleep over (carry over affect).
shelter dogs have more activity then owned dogs as well as less rest –> stress
