Natalia de Souza Albuquerque

• BSc Biological Sciences MSc and DSc Experimental Psychology/Animal Behaviour
• PostDoc Position at University of São Paulo

The perception of emotional expressions allows animals to evaluate the social intentions and motivations of each other. This usually takes place within species; however, in the case of domestic dogs, it might be advantageous to recognize the emotions of humans as well as other dogs. In this sense, the combination of visual and auditory cues to cate...

Dogs are able to perceptually discriminate emotional displays of conspecifics and heterospecifics and possess the cognitive prototypes for emotional categorisation, however, it remains unclear whether dogs can respond appropriately to this information. One way to assess associations between specific behaviours and the perception of emotionally comp...

Livro que reúne textos inéditos de 14 autores, divididos em 11 capítulos sobre diversos aspectos da cognição e do comportamento de cães domésticos.

We analyzed 410 nest locations from 150 individual nesting hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) on the northeastern Brazilian coast during 8 nesting seasons from 2006 to 2014 to evaluate individual nesting preferences. We determined the consistency of nest site choice within and between nesting seasons for open sand and vegetation nest microh...

Masking the sounds uttered by cetaceans is an important issue in underwater noise pollution produced by vessels. This research aimed to determine whether noises produced by the engines of tourism boats can mask whistles emitted by estuarine dolphins (Sotalia guianensis). Data collection was conducted at Baía dos Golfinhos (English: Dolphin Bay) (Ri...

Motivation influences essential behaviors for survival and well-being, driven by internal and external factors. By observing behaviors, we can understand motivational needs, decision-making processes, and preferences. Food acquisition is a survival motivator that covers a great part of daily activities, in contrast, play behavior shares a common ba...

Studies suggest that dogs exhibit prosocial behaviors toward humans and can rescue their guardians trapped in a box. We investigated whether dogs could communicate with an experimenter to gain access to a crying actor (the crying condition) who was visible but inaccessible, as she remained behind a fence throughout the test, or when she was simply...

Animals’ development is influenced by the environment in which they live. In the case of dogs, persons can decide whether that environment is the internal or external part of their residences, which differ strongly in terms of physical and social environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate which characteristics of the dog and the owner influ...

Capuchin monkeys have rich social relationships and from very young ages they participate in complex interactions with members of their group. Lipsmacking behaviour, which involves at least two individuals in socially-mediated interactions, may tell about processes that maintain, accentuate or attenuate emotional exchanges in monkeys. Lipsmacking i...

Simple Summary Understanding how dogs behave in different situations is an important question in the dog–human relationship. In fact, it is not yet fully understood how their behaviours might be linked to their emotional state, which generates obstacles to communication between species. The aim of this study was to investigate how different emotion...

Owing to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous animal behavior studies incorporated elements of citizen science and/or were conducted remotely through online video calls. For the current cognition study about communication of domestic cats, the authors added an element of synchronicity to the citizen science approach. Considering...

Emotions are critical for humans, not only feeling and expressing them, but also reading the emotional expressions of others. For a long time, this ability was thought to be exclusive to people; however, there is now evidence that other animals also rely on emotion perception to guide their behaviour and to adjust their actions in such way as to gu...

Emotions are critical for humans, not only feeling and expressing them, but also reading the emotional expressions of others. For a long time, this ability was thought to be exclusive to people; however, there is now evidence that other animals also rely on emotion perception to guide their behaviour and to adjust their actions in such way as to gu...

Pet dog aggression concerns both dogs and owners’ wellbeing and their relationship, since nowadays owners work to guarantee proper conditions for their dogs’ wellbeing, and to have a healthy emotional relationship with them. Aggressive behaviours often fall under the category of ‘undesired’ behaviours since they are mostly associated with negative...

The ability to infer emotional states and their wider consequences requires the establishment of relationships between the emotional display and subsequent actions. These abilities, together with the use of emotional information from others in social decision making, are cognitively demanding and require inferential skills that extend beyond the im...

Studies have investigated the relationship between dogs’ morphological characteristics and behavioural dimensions, but little is discussed about this relationship in the context of dogs’ responses to emotion eliciting stimuli and temperament. Based on the assumption that the developmental trajectory of behaviour and emotion processing is impacted b...

Using social information is not indiscriminate and being able to choose what to copy and from whom to copy is critical. Dogs are able to learn socially, to recognize, and respond to dog as well as human emotional expressions, and to make reputation-like inferences based on how people behave towards their owner. Yet, the mechanisms dogs use for obta...

Highlights • Younger dogs have higher Positive Activation scores • Older short snout dogs tend to have lower Negative Activation scores • Taller long snout dogs tend to have lower Negative Activation scores • Taller dogs tend to have higher Positive and Negative Activation scores • Heavier dogs tended to have higher Negative Activation scores Abstr...

The current study investigated associations between behavioral problems in Brazilian dogs and the demographic characteristics of both the dogs and their owners, as well as the quality of owner-dog relationship. Although Brazil has a large population of dogs, little is known about their behavioral profiles and to what extent they are comparable to t...

How do capuchin monkeys choose a stone to use as a hammer? Current research on tool use and problem solving by animals focus on the ecological problems faced by individuals, avoiding anthropocentric assumptions and addressing the ontogenetic, ecological and morphological factors that affect and determine the use of tools (Resende, 2010). This persp...

Documento produzido pelo Laboratório de Etologia Canina (LECA) e endossado por mais de 60 pesquisadoras e pesquisadores de diversas áreas da Ciência sobre animais de estimação e a covid-19

The English version of the Positive and Negative Activation Scale (PANAS) is a useful tool for the assessment of dog temperament, helping to identify highly sensitive individuals that could be at risk of developing fears, phobias and anxiety problems, and potentially depressive states. This study evaluated the association between dogs’ and owners’...

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...