Alan G. McElligott

City University of Hong Kong | CityU · School of Veterinary Medicine

Are animals capable of empathy, problem-solving, or even self-recognition? Much research is dedicated to answering these questions and yet few studies have considered how humans form beliefs about animal minds. Evidence suggests that our mentalising of animals is a natural consequence of Theory of Mind (ToM) capabilities. However, where beliefs reg...

Reading another animal's emotional state can enable receivers to anticipate their behavioural motivations, which is important in guiding interactions with that individual. For species living closely alongside humans, the emotional cues that we express can be almost as informative as those of conspecifics. Goats, Capra hircus, can discriminate diffe...

Animal welfare is the state of an animal's body and mind and the level to which its requirements are satisfied. Animal welfare is affected by human decisions and actions. Numerous decisions concerning animals are driven by human desires to enhance their own lives, and some of these decisions may be influenced by self-interest or a strong emphasis o...

Allogrooming is a common affiliative behaviour with hygienic, physiological and social consequences, and has historically been examined in non-human primates in order to understand the evolution of sociality. In primates, allogrooming is well-known to have evolved for an antiparasitic function, leading to physiological consequences and further adop...

Social interactions are fundamental properties of gregarious species, helping to establish dominance hierarchies and maintain social bonds within groups. Cattle, Bos taurus, are social ungulates which engage in affiliative and agonistic relationships with other individuals. Although there are approximately 1.5 billion cattle on the planet, the oppo...

Similarity or homophily in personality drives preferential strong social bonds or friendships in humans and some non-human primate species. However, little is known about the general behavioral “decision rules” underlying animal friendships in other taxa. We investigated a feral and free-ranging population of water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) to dete...

1. Anthropogenic land use has transformed habitats globally, leading to human-wildlife co-habitations that present challenges and opportunities for coexistence. This coexistence is contingent on the nature and frequency of human-animal interactions (HAI) that are primarily shaped by public attitudes and values.2. We designed a questionnaire using t...

Friendships, exhibited by both humans and non-human animals, have considerable adaptive benefits. In humans, similarity or homophily in personality is considered a proximate mechanism driving friendships, yet little is known about the behavioural ‘decision rules’ underlying animal friendships. Some empirical research suggests that animal friendship...

Positive welfare is a relatively modern concept based on the idea that on the whole, an animal’s positive experiences should outweigh their negative ones. Intuitively, we therefore require indicators to measure when animals are experiencing positive and negative emotional states, as well as providing opportunities for animals to create positive exp...

[First paragraph, not an "abstract"] In June 2022, a group of Animal Behaviour and Welfare researchers from around the world organised a workshop (https://www.asab.org/conferences-events/2022/6/20/ethics-of-animal-behaviour-and-welfare-research-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond) designed to prompt discussion about the future of ethics in animal beha...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) support human living standards globally. However, there is little information on the effect of human perceptions of emotion and pain on the welfare of working donkeys. We interviewed donkey owners (n = 332) in Pakistan to determine the relationship between human perspectives on donkey sentience: emotions and the abili...

Recognition plays a key role in the social lives of gregarious species, enabling animals to distinguish among social partners and tailor their behaviour accordingly. As domesticated animals regularly interact with humans, as well as members of their own species, we might expect mechanisms used to discriminate between conspecifics to also apply to h...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) support human living standards globally. However, there is little information on the effect of human perceptions of sentience (ability to feel pain and to have positive and negative emotions) on their welfare. We interviewed donkey owners (n = 332) in Pakistan to determine the relationship between human perspectives o...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) support human living standards globally. However, there is little information on the effect of human perceptions of sentience (ability to feel pain and to have positive and negative emotions) on their welfare. We interviewed donkey owners (n = 332) in Pakistan to determine the relationship between human perspectives o...

Reading another animals emotional state can enable receivers to anticipate their behavioural motivations, which is important in guiding interactions with that individual. For species living closely alongside humans, the emotional cues that people express can be almost as informative as those of conspecifics. Goats can discriminate differences in em...

Social interactions are fundamental properties of gregarious species, helping to establish dominance hierarchies and maintain social bonds within groups, thus having significant effects on fitness. Cattle (Bos taurus) are social ungulates which engage in affiliative and agonistic relationships with other individuals. Although there are approximatel...

Dominance hierarchies help to reduce unnecessary fights and associated costs during the mating season. Fallow deer, Dama dama, typically have high levels of maleemale competition and strong reproductive skew. Nevertheless, how male dominance and daily fight rates affect mating success is still uncertain. We used a 2-year data set from a large popul...

Laryngeal echolocation in bats could have evolved following two scenarios: a single origin from a common ancestor or an independent acquisition inside the two clades Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera. Later, some members of Yinpterochiroptera possibly lost their ability to echolocate. In bats, the larynx produces vocalizations for communicatio...

Personal wellbeing is greatly influenced by our childhood and adolescence, and the relationships formed during those phases of our development. The human-dog bond represents a significant relationship that started thousands of years ago. There is a higher prevalence of dog ownership around the world, especially in households including children. Thi...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) are important for supporting human living standards globally. However, there is little information on the effect of human perceptions of emotion and pain in working donkeys. We interviewed donkey owners (n = 332) in Pakistan to determine the relationship between human perspectives on donkey emotions and ability to fee...

Features varying more between than within individuals are considered as potential cues for individual recognition. According to the source‐filter theory of vocal production, the fundamental frequency of mammals' vocalizations depends on the characteristics of vocal folds, while Formants are determined by the characteristics of the vocal tract. Goat...

Our wellbeing is greatly influenced by our childhood and adolescence, and the relationships that we form during those phases of our development. The human-dog bond started thousands of years ago. The higher prevalence of dog ownership around the world, especially in households including children along with the growing number of people studying dogs...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) are essential for human livelihoods and are important for carrying goods. Current recommendations suggest donkeys should only carry loads of up to 50% of their own body weight. We investigated the mounted loads carried by working donkeys in Pakistan. A cross-sectional questionnaire study of donkey owners (n = 332) was...

The annual global production of chickens exceeds 25 billion birds, which are often housed in very large groups, numbering thousands. Distress calling triggered by various sources of stress has been suggested as an ‘iceberg indicator’ of chicken welfare. However, to date, the identification of distress calls largely relies on manual annotation, whic...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) are vital to people's livelihoods. They are essential for carrying goods, however, globally, overloading is one of the primary welfare concerns for working donkeys. We studied mounted load carrying by donkeys and associated factors in Pakistan. A cross-sectional study of donkey owners (n = 332) was conducted, and inte...

Features varying more between than within individuals are usually considered as potential cues for individual recognition. According to the source-filter theory of vocal production, the fundamental frequency of mammal's vocalisations depends on the characteristics of the vocal folds, while formants are determined by the characteristics of the vocal...

Dominance hierarchies help to reduce unnecessary fights and associated costs during the mating season. Fallow deer ( Dama dama ) typically have high levels of male-male competition and strong reproductive skew. Nevertheless, how male dominance and daily fight rates affect mating success remains unknown. We used a two-year dataset from a large popul...

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) are vital to peoples livelihoods. They are essential for carrying goods, however globally, overloading is one of the primary welfare concerns of working donkeys. We studied mounted load carrying by donkeys and associated factors in Pakistan. A cross-sectional study of donkey owners (n = 332) was conducted, and intervi...

Animal welfare is important for the humane treatment of animals under our care. Zoos and rescue centres manage various charismatic animals, such as big cats, with limited resources. It is therefore essential for caretakers to understand the needs of an individual big cat to ensure its welfare. However, these needs may differ due to a big cat's pers...

The annual global production of chickens exceeds 25 billion birds, and they are often housed in very large groups, numbering thousands. Distress calling triggered by various sources of stress has been suggested as an "iceberg indicator" of chicken welfare. However, to date, the identification of distress calls largely relies on manual annotations,...

1. De Araujo et al. (Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13516) described the development and application of a wire foot snare trap for the capture of jaguars Panthera onca and cougars Puma concolor. Snares are a commonly used and effective means of studying large carnivores. However, the article presented insu...

In developing countries, there are approximately 112 million working equids (horses and donkeys) and most of them are subject to overloading. Overloading is associated with serious welfare problems. Developing a deeper understanding of safe loading capacity of equids is important for both effective performance and welfare. Carrying loads that are b...

Animal welfare is important for the humane treatment of animals under our care. Zoos and rescue centres manage various charismatic animals such as big cats with limited resources. It is therefore essential for caretakers to understand the needs of an individual big cat to ensure its welfare. However, these needs may differ due to a big cat’s person...

There are approximately 112 million working equids in developing countries, many of which are associated with brick kilns. Brick kilns and overloading are associated with welfare problems in working equids. Understanding equids’ abilities and influencing factors are important for both effective performance and welfare. Traditionally, measurement of...

The ability to adapt to changing environments is crucial for survival and has evolved based on socio-ecological factors. Goats and sheep are closely related, with similar social structures, body sizes and domestication levels, but different feeding ecologies, i.e. goats are browsers and sheep are grazers. We investigated whether goats' reliance on...

Domestication is generally assumed to have resulted in enhanced communication abilities between non-primate mammals and humans, although the number of species studied is very limited (e. In species without hands for pointing, gazing at humans when dealing with inaccessible food during an unsolvable task, and in particular gaze alternations between...

Chicks (Gallus gallus domesticus) make a repetitive, high energy 'distress' call when stressed. Distress calls are a catch-all response to a range of environmental stressors, and elicit food calling and brooding from hens. Pharmacological and behavioural laboratory studies link expression of this call with negative affective state. As such, there i...

Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are extremely adept in interpreting human-given cues, such as the pointing gesture. However, the underlying mechanisms on how domestic non-companion species use these cues are not well understood. We investigated the use of human-given pointing gestures by goats (Capra hircus) in an object choice task, where an experim...

Animals are likely to appraise events as positive or negative based on their subjective perception, current state and past experiences. We tested the effects of anticipating positive (food anticipation), negative (inaccessible food) and neutral (clicker sound) events on behavioural and physiological responses of 30 goats. The experimental paradigm...

Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are extremely adept in interpreting human-given cues, such as the pointing gesture. However, the underlying mechanisms on how domestic non-companion species use these cues are not well understood. We investigated the use of human-given pointing gestures by goats (Capra hircus) in an object-choice task, where an experim...

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/12603/animal-welfare-measurement-and-assessment?fbclid=IwAR0Se7wFBT7NnbPpW7vw3RTiASQ45yoxjk8Nq8q_lEE5uc

Background: Evidence from humans suggests that the expression of emotions can regulate social interactions and promote coordination within a group. Despite its evolutionary importance, social communication of emotions in non-human animals is still not well understood. Here, we combine behavioural and physiological measures, to determine if animals...

Abstract Vocalisations carry emotional, physiological, and individual information. This suggests that they may serve as potentially useful indicators for inferring animal welfare. At the same time, automated methods for analysing and classifying sound have developed rapidly, particularly in the fields of ecology, conservation, and sound scene clas...

Functional asymmetries, e.g. the preferential involvement of one brain hemisphere to process stimuli, may increase brain efficiency and the capacity to carry out tasks simultaneously. We investigated which hemisphere was primarily involved in processing acoustic stimuli in goats using a head-orienting paradigm. Three playbacks using goat vocalisati...

Domestication has shaped the physiology and the behaviour of animals to better adapt to human environments. Therefore, human facial expressions may be highly informative for animals domesticated for working closely with people, such as dogs and horses. However, it is not known whether other animals, and particularly those domesticated primarily for...

Behavioural lateralization consists of perceptual and motor lateralization and provides adaptive advantages such as a general increase in brain efficiency. Motor laterality refers to the preferred use of either left or right limbs or organs to perform a specific task. We investigated motor laterality in goats (Capra hircus), using the First-steppin...

Despite significant progress, there is still a gender gap in science all over the world, especially at senior levels. Some progressive countries are recognizing the need to address barriers to gender equality in order to retain their best scientists and innovators, and ensure research excellence and social and economic returns on the investment mad...

Animals domesticated for working closely with humans (e.g. dogs) have been shown to be remarkable in adjusting their behaviour to human attentional stance. However, there is little evidence for this form of information perception in species domesticated for production rather than companionship. We tested domestic ungulates (goats) for their ability...

Raw data.

ESM video. Video depicts a test trial from Experiment 3. Test condition ‘Eyes closed’.

When identifying other individuals, animals may match current cues with stored information about that individual from the same sensory modality. Animals may also be able to combine current information with previously acquired information from other sensory modalities, indicating that they possess complex cognitive templates of individuals that are...

Variation in common personality traits, such as boldness or exploration, is often associated with risk–reward trade–offs and behavioural flexibility. To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of consistent behavioural traits on both learning and cognition. We investigated whether certain personality traits (‘exploration’ and ‘sociabilit...

Animal emotional states can be investigated by evaluating their impact on cognitive processes. In this study, we used a judgement bias paradigm to determine if short-term positive human-animal interaction (grooming) induced a positive affective state in goats. We tested two groups of goats and trained them to discriminate between a rewarded and a n...

Raw data Raw data for Experiment 1 (judgment bias training and test). Characteristics of goats tested in the judgement bias experiment and variables considered: ID, sex, age, condition, reward side, day, location, latency time in s, and reciprocal transformation of latency time. Raw data for Experiment 2 (physiological parameters during grooming)....

Domestication drives changes in animal cognition and behaviour. In particular, the capacity of dogs to socially learn from humans is considered a key outcome of how domestication shaped the canid brain. However, systematic evidence for social learning from humans in other domestic species is lacking and makes general conclusions about how domestica...

Domestication is an important factor driving changes in animal cognition and behaviour. In particular, the capacity of dogs to communicate in a referential and intentional way with humans is considered a key outcome of how domestication as a companion animal shaped the canid brain. However, the lack of comparison with other domestic animals makes g...

Individual recognition in gregarious species is fundamental in order to avoid misdirected parental investment. In ungulates, two very different parental care strategies have been identified: “hider” offspring usually lie concealed in vegetation whereas offspring of “follower” species remain with their mothers while they forage. These two strategies...

The African penguin is a nesting seabird endemic to southern Africa. In penguins of the genus Spheniscus vocalisations are important for social recognition. However, it is not clear which acoustic features of calls can encode individual identity information. We recorded contact calls and ecstatic display songs of 12 adult birds from a captive colon...

Modulation of the autonomic nervous system activity (ANS) allows animals to effectively respond to internal and external stimuli in everyday challenges via changes in for example, heart and respiration rate. Various factors, ranging from social such as dominance rank, to internal such as personality or affective states can impact on animal physiolo...

Background Mammal vocal parameters such as fundamental frequency (or pitch; fo) and formant dispersion often provide information about quality traits of the producer (e.g. dominance and body size), suggesting that they are sexually selected. However, little experimental evidence exists demonstrating the importance of these cues in intrasexual compe...

REVIEW paper. The development of accurate measures of animal emotions is important for improving and promoting animal welfare. Cognitive bias indicates the effect of emotional states on cognitive processes, such as memory, attention, and judgement. Cognitive bias tests complement existing behavioural and physiological measures for assessing the va...

Emotions are important because they enable the selection of appropriate behavioural decisions in response to external or internal events. Techniques for understanding and assessing animal emotions, and particularly positive ones, are lacking. Emotions can be characterized by two dimensions: their arousal (bodily excitation) and their valence (negat...

Machine learning techniques are becoming an important tool for studying animal vocal communication. The goat (Capra hircus) is a very social species, in which vocal communication and recognition are important. We tested the reliability of a Multi-Layer Perceptron (feed-forward Artificial Neural Network, ANN) to automate the process of classificatio...

The computational demands of sociality (maintaining group cohesion, reducing conflict) and ecological problems (extractive foraging, memorizing resource locations) are the main drivers proposed to explain the evolution cognition. Different predictions follow, about whether animals would preferentially learn new tasks socially or not, but the preval...

Vocalizations encode a range of information about the caller, and variation in calling behavior and vocal structure may provide listeners with information about the motivation and condition of the caller. Fallow bucks only vocalize during the breeding season and can produce more than 3000 groans per hour. Males modulate their calling rates, calling...

Animals can use their environments more efficiently by selecting particular sources of information (personal or social), according to specific situations. Group-living animals may benefit from gaining information based on the behaviour of other individuals. Indeed, social information is assumed to be faster and less costly to use than personal info...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jzo.12083/abstract We conducted a study of the male rut vocalizations (groans) of two closely related species, Persian and European fallow deer. Persian fallow deer are endangered, restricted to Iran and Israel, and their rut vocalizations have never been studied. By contrast, European fallow deer are one...

Moods influence cognitive processes in that people in positive moods expect more positive events to occur and less negative ones (“optimistic bias”), whereas the opposite happens for people in negative moods (“pessimistic bias”). The evidence for an effect of mood on cognitive bias is also increasing in animals, suggesting that measures of optimism...

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064825 Abstract Sexual selection has resulted in sex-based size dimorphism in many mammals, including humans. In Western societies, average to taller stature men and comparatively shorter, slimmer women have higher reproductive success and are typically considered more attractive...

Polyandry is widespread, but its adaptive significance is not fully understood. The hypotheses used to explain its persistence have rarely been tested in the wild and particularly for large, long-lived mammals. We investigated polyandry in fallow deer, using female mating and reproduction data gathered over 10 years. Females of this species produce...

Parent-offspring recognition is crucial for offspring survival. At long distances, this recognition is mainly based on vocalizations. Because of maturation-related changes to the structure of vocalizations, parents have to learn successive call versions produced by their offspring throughout ontogeny in order to maintain recognition. However, becau...

Vocal plasticity is the ability of an individual to modify its vocalizations according to its environment. Humans benefit from an extreme form of vocal plasticity, allowing us to produce a wide range of sounds. This capacity to modify sounds has been shown in three bird orders and in a few nonhuman mammal species, all characterized by complex vocal...