Monica Padilla de la Torre

• BSc, MSc, PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Copenhagen

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...

Emotions can be defined as an individual's affective reaction to an external and/or internal event that, in turn, generates a simultaneous cascade of behavioral, physiological, and cognitive changes. Those changes that can be perceived by conspecifics have the potential to also affect other's emotional states, a process labeled as “emotional contag...

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...

Vocalizations constitute an effective way to communicate both emotional arousal (bodily activation) and valence (negative/positive). There is strong evidence suggesting that the convergence of vocal expression of emotional arousal among animal species occurs, hence enabling cross-species perception of arousal, but it is not clear if the same is tru...

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...

Very little is known about cattle vocalizations. The few studies available in the literature have been conducted using animals under stress or very intensive husbandry conditions. Similarly, the individual consistency of behaviour in cattle has rarely been considered except in applied studies of constrained and isolated animals, and no previous res...

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...

Alterations in motor activity related to dopamine changes in some brain regions have been described as consequences of the modifications produced by systemic administration of MK-801 (a noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist) in rats. Acetaldehyde (ACH), the main metabolite of ethanol, has been implicated in different alterations in the central ne...

Acetaldehyde, the most toxic metabolite of ethanol, has been implicated in many toxic effects of ethanol. In the present study, we used rats to investigate the possible changes on the sleep-wake cycle and brain regional concentrations of noradrenaline and serotonin after intraperitoneal administration of several doses of acetaldehyde. Results showe...