Céline Tallet

French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) | INRAE

The vocal expression of emotion is likely driven by shared physiological principles among species. However, which acoustic features promote decoding of emotional state and how the decoding is affected by ther listener's psychology remain poorly understood. Here we tested how acoustic features of piglet vocalizations interact with psychological prof...

Even though of relatively short duration (approximately 4 h/sow/reproductive cycle), the time stockpersons spend in contact with reproductive sows and their piglets is of very high importance since it may influence both performance and welfare of the animals. During this time, numerous human-pig interactions occur, especially around birth, breeding...

Pig groups are known to be organised along dominance hierarchies. Little is known about the characteristics of the hierarchy in groups of sows and there are various methods to calculate dominance ranks within the hierarchy. Assessing dominance through recording agonistic interactions requires time-consuming observations. In order to compare the ran...

In domestic species, studying human-animal interactions and their consequences on the establishment of a positive Human-Animal Relationship (HAR) would have applications for both improving animal welfare. Objectify the quality of a HAR requires information on several aspects of the animal biology and emotional states (spatial behaviour, physiologic...

Vocal expression of emotions has been observed across species and could provide a non-invasive and reliable means to assess animal emotions. We investigated if pig vocal indicators of emotions revealed in previous studies are valid across call types and contexts, and could potentially be used to develop an automated emotion monitoring tool. We perf...

Une meilleure prise en compte de la variabilité des besoins nutritionnels entre les truies gestantes permet de réduire les coûts alimentaires sans détériorer leurs performances. Les modèles nutritionnels prédisent les besoins journaliers et peuvent être couplés à des automates pour délivrer un mélange individualisé d’aliments. La variabilité des be...

Social behavior is a key component of pig welfare on farms, but little is known on the development of social behaviors in piglets. This study aimed to explore social behaviors and identify early social styles in suckling piglets. Social behaviors of 68 piglets from 12 litters were scored continuously for 8 h per day at 21 and 42 days of age, and we...

Taking into account individual variability while feeding a group of sows allows feed cost reductions and therefore improves animal efficiency. This precision feeding strategy is based on 1) nutritional models, which are able to predict daily individual nutrient requirements; 2) automatons, that can deliver individual rations; and 3) new technologie...

In this chapter, the authors examine the physiological and behavioural reactions in pigs submitted to tissue damaging procedures. They are grouped in three parts: (1) neural, (2) hormonal and metabolic and (3) behavioural consequences. The chapter focuses on surgical castration, tail docking and tooth resection that are very common in the pig indus...

Emotions not only arise in reaction to an event but also while anticipating it, making this context a means of accessing the emotional value of events. Before now, anticipatory studies have rarely considered whether vocalisations carry information about emotional states. We studied both the grunts of piglets and their spatial behaviour as they anti...

Enriching the life of farm animals is a legal obligation in intensive farming conditions in the European Union, though not worldwide. In pigs, manipulable materials are mandatory when no bedding is available. Like manipulable objects, positive human interactions might also be considered as enrichment, as they provide the animals with opportunities...

Emotions not only arise in reaction to an event but also while anticipating it, making this context a means of accessing the emotional value of events. Before now, anticipatory studies have rarely considered whether vocalisations carry information about emotional states. We studied both the grunts of piglets and their spatial behaviour as they anti...

During their first days of postnatal life, piglets reared for meat production are often subjected to numerous husbandry practices that cause injury of sensitive tissues and hence are potential sources of pain. The intensity and duration of the pain engendered depend on the nature and magnitude of tissue damage. Each of these practices is carried ou...

La relation entre les porcs et les humains est au centre de l’élevage et est un des piliers du bien-être animal. L’humain, par son comportement et ses choix de pratiques, de conditions de logement et de gestion du troupeau va influencer l’état mental de ses animaux. Cette synthèse propose un bilan des travaux sur la relation humain-animal en élevag...

Enriching the life of farm animals is an obligation in intensive farming conditions. In pigs, manipulable materials are mandatory when no bedding is available. Like manipulable objects, positive human interactions might be considered as enrichment, as they provide the animals occasions to interact, increase their activity and lead to positive emoti...

Emotions not only arise in reaction to an eliciting event but also while anticipating it, making this context a way to assess the emotional value of events. Anticipatory studies have poorly considered vocalisations whereas they carry information about the emotional state. We studied the grunts of piglets that anticipated two (pseudo)social events k...

The human-pig relationship develops through visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory interactions. Our objective was to determine the effect of human voices on the development of the human-pig relationship. We hypothesised that human voice facilitates the development of the human-pig relationship. We studied the behaviour of 90 weaned female piglet...

Evidence of pain in piglets subjected to invasive management procedures

During their first days of postnatal life, piglets reared for meat production are often subjected to numerous husbandry practices that cause injury of sensitive tissues and hence are potential sources of pain. The intensity and duration of the pain engendered depend on the nature and magnitude of tissue damage. Each of these practices is carried ou...

Tail docking is widely performed in pig farms to prevent tail biting. We investigated the consequences of this practice on behavioral indicators of pain and stress, and on the human-piglet relationship during lactation. Within 19 litters, piglets (1–3 days of age) were submitted on day 0 (D0) to docking with a cautery iron (D), sham-docking (S), or...

Emotions, unlike mood, are short-lived reactions associated with specific events. They can be characterized by two main dimensions, their arousal (bodily activation) and valence (negative versus positive). Knowledge of the valence of emotions experienced by domestic and captive animals is crucial for assessing and improving their welfare, as it ena...

Emotions, unlike mood, are short-lived reactions associated with specific events. They can be characterized by two main dimensions, their arousal (bodily activation) and valence (negative versus positive). Knowledge of the valence of emotions experienced by domestic and captive animals is crucial for assessing and improving their welfare, as it ena...

The pig industry faces many animal welfare issues. Among these, biting behaviour has a high incidence. It is indicative of an existing problem in biters and is a source of physical damage and psychological stress for the victims. We categorize this behaviour into aggressive and non-aggressive biting, the latter often being directed towards the tail...

Poster

The pig industry faces many animal welfare issues. Among these, biting behaviour has a high incidence. It is indicative of an existing problem in biters and is a source of physical damage and psychological stress for the victims. We categorize this behaviour into aggressive and non-aggressive biting, the latter often being directed towards the tail...

Zusammenfassung Das Ziel von PigWatch ist es, zusammen mit Landwirten, tierbasierte Messungen zu entwickeln und anzuwenden, um den Schmerz, die Frustration und die negativen emotionalen Zustände zu vermeiden, die mit Schwanzbeißen und Aggressionen bei Schweinen assoziiert sind. Summary Together with pig farmers, PigWatch aims to develop and apply...

Vocal communication is of major social importance in pigs. Their auditory sensitivity goes beyond the intraspecific level; studies have shown that domestic pigs are sensitive to and can learn to recognise human voices. The question of which prosodic features (intonation, accentuation, rhythm) of human speech may matter to this recognition, however,...

Despite decades of intensive research on injurious behaviours like aggression and tail biting in pigs, these problems still persist on many farms. In Europe, stricter enforcement of legislation against routine tail docking puts additional pressure on farmers, and researchers are asked to find solutions. But, remedial measures are dependent on early...

Domestic pig fear of humans is common, certainly because a lot of the human interactions are aversive and the current intensive pig husbandry systems do not leave much place for positive interactions. However, the situation may change because the quality of human–animal relationship is being included in many welfare evaluation systems. The developm...

Resection of piglet needle teeth is a common procedure aimed at minimising injuries sustained by piglets and sows during feeding competition which can lead to infections and productivity losses. However, negative consequences such as local inflammation and infection (which may progress to systemic infection) have been reported, making tooth resecti...

Prenatal sensory experience, notably auditory experience, is a source of fetal memories in many species. The contiguity between sensory stimuli and maternal emotional reactions provides opportunity for associative learning in utero but no clear evidence for this associative learning has been presented to date. Understanding this phenomenon would ad...

Anna R.L.Sinclair1, Aubérie Renouard2, CélineTallet2, Dale A. Sandercock1, Armelle Prunier2 1Animal and Veterinary Science Research Group, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), Roslin Institute Building, Easter Bush, UK EH25 9RG 2UMR PEGASE, Institut National de la Reserches Agronomique (INRA), Domaine de la Prise 35590 SAINT GILLES, France Piglets...

Although animals rarely use only one sense to communicate, few studies have investigated the use of combinations of different signals between animals and humans. This study assessed for the first time the spontaneous reactions of piglets to human pointing gestures and voice in an object-choice task with a reward. Piglets (Sus scrofa domestica) main...

Data set. (XLSX)

Though animals rarely use only one sense to communicate, few studies have been done on the use of combinations of signals between animals and humans. Piglets’ ability to use human visual signals (i.e. pointing gestures) is not clearly demonstrated. They mainly use auditory signals to communicate with conspecifics and might be sensitive to human voi...

This study examined whether piglet distress vocalizations vary with age, body weight and health status, according to the predictions of the honest signalling of need evolutionary model. Vocalizations were recorded during manual squeezing (a simulation of being crushed by mother sow) and during isolation on Days 1 and 7 after birth in piglets from 1...

Tail docking is still applied in Europe to prevent tail biting, despite its evident negative impact on pig welfare. We aimed at characterising consequences of tail docking on suckling piglets. We compared 48 piglets with tail docked (C) to 50 undocked piglets submitted to a non-painful simulation of docking (S). Their behavioural reaction during do...

L'environnement des truies pendant la gestation peut être source de stress et pourrait influencer la survie des porcelets. Une étude a été menée dans deux systèmes appliqués pendant la gestation, Conventionnel (C, caillebotis intégral) vs. Enrichi (E, litière de paille et surface par truie plus grande), afin d'évaluer leur impact sur la mortalité p...

Rearing social animals like pigs in isolation from conspecifics can have consequences on behaviour and physiology. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether rearing conditions affect body posture. We adapted a method for quantitative evaluation of posture based on geometric morphometrics, developed in horses, for pigs and applied it in di...

Humans are part of the environment of domestic animals and interact with them daily, providing a good basis for the study of interspecific relationships. Abilities to discriminate and recognise individuals form the basis of these relationships, and they are crucial skills for domestic animals, since individual humans can differ in their behaviour t...

Le cochon, un mythe sur le gril

Farm animals have to adapt to human presence from birth and being handled may lead to fear and stress reactions. It is known that the mother can be used as a postnatal model in the development of young-human relationship. hrough her, some information like auditory ones may even be learnt prenatally. We tested this idea in pigs because they communic...

Tail docking in the irst days of life is a common practice in the production of pigs. Tail docking is done to prevent tail biting and leads to behavioural changes indicative of pain and to later development of neuromas in the docked tail tips (Herskin et al., submitted). However, it is not known whether the early peripheral nerve damage can lead to...

This study examined whether piglet distress vocalizations vary with age, body weight and health status, according to the predictions of the honest signalling of need evolutionary model. Vocalizations were recorded during manual squeezing (a simulation of being crushed by mother sow) and during isolation on Days 1 and 7 after birth in piglets from 1...

Rearing entire pigs may lead to meat quality and welfare problems in relation to pubertal development. A better knowledge of the sources of variation of pubertal development, behaviour and boar taint is needed before generalizing entire male pigs. From 84 days of age, entire male pigs were reared in groups of 10 either in a conventional (C, 1 m²/an...

Two important questions in bioacoustics are whether vocal repertoires of animals are graded or discrete and how the vocal expressions are linked to the context of emission. Here we address these questions in an ungulate species. The vocal repertoire of young domestic pigs, Sus scrofa, was quantitatively described based on 1513 calls recorded in 11...

Call parameters measured for each call. (DOCX)

Results of discriminant analyses with call clusters as grouping variable. A. 2-cluster solution and B. 5-cluster solution. (DOCX)

Mean ± standard error of acoustic parameters for each cluster. (DOCX)

Session C5: Applied Ethology

Session 10 : Social Behaviour

Two important questions in bioacoustics are whether vocal repertoires of animals are graded or discrete and how the vocal expressions are linked to the context of emission. Here we address these questions in an ungulate species. The vocal repertoire of young domestic pigs, Sus scrofa, was quantitatively described based on 1513 calls recorded in 11...