Paolo Baragli

Università di Pisa | UNIPI · Department of Veterinary Sciences

Studies on short- and long-term memory and their decline with aging in horses are still limited. This research aimed to assess the learning and short- and long-term memory abilities of adult and senior horses. A total of 21 adult horses (5–15 years) and 23 senior horses (16 years and older) were subjected to a behavioral test (Target Touch Test), w...

The increasing interest in the study of spontaneous (SY) and contagious yawning (CY) was so far focussed on several taxa, especially primates. Here, we focused on SY and CY in horses, a suitable species due to their complex social dynamics that has been largely overlooked in research on these phenomena. By analysing videos of 48 horses on pasture,...

This research investigates the human-horse bond, aiming to unveil the physiological mechanisms regulating interspecies interactions. We hypothesized observing a physiological synchronization in human-horse dynamics, akin to human interactions. Through time-frequency Granger causality analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) and behavioral data, thi...

Cerebral lateralisation is the tendency for an individual to preferentially use one side of their brain and is apparent in the biased use of paired sensory organs. Horses vary in eye use when viewing a novel stimulus which may be due to different physiological reactions. To understand the interplay between physiology and lateralisation, we presente...

Genetics, the uterine environment, maternal behavior, and rearing conditions can all influence animal behavioral phenotypes. Some studies on cloned pigs have found no differences between the behavioral patterns of cloned and non-cloned animals. Other studies conducted on dogs have reported similarities in the behavior of cloned subjects. This study...

Delivery is not easily predictable in horses and the consequences of dystocia can be serious for both the mare and foal. An induction protocol with low doses of oxytocin has been reported as a safe procedure. This study investigates the effect of induced delivery on at-term mares’ sympathetic-vagal balance. Fourteen mares were included and divided...

Globally, most people now own a pet. Scales have been developed to understand the impact of pet ownership on people’s lives and to measure specific aspects of the owner–pet relationship. The Cat-/Dog-Owner Relationship Scale (C/DORS) is a tool developed to investigate this relationship in both dog and cat owners. The aim of the study was to refine...

Riders’ asymmetry may cause back pain in both human and equine athletes. This pilot study aimed at documenting in a simple and quick way asymmetry in riders during a simulation of three different riding positions on wooden horseback using load cells applied on the stirrup leathers and identifying possible associations between riders’ asymmetry and...

Frustration responses of animals when environmental resources are present, but inaccessible may help to understand their motivation, i.e. the importance to access these resources. However, neither motivation nor frustration have been investigated in mules. Here, we investigated whether horses and mules are motivated to access a biologically relevan...

The commentary by Gallup and Anderson (Anim Cogn https:// doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s10071-021-01538-9, 2021) on the original article by Baragli, Scopa, Maglieri, and Palagi (Anim Cogn https:// doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s10071-021-01502-7, 2021) raised some concerns about the methodological approach used by the authors to demonstrate Mirror Self-Recognition (M...

This study aimed to investigate differences in heart rate variability (HRV) between healthy and sick neonatal foals with a variety of diagnosis and to verify whether some HRV parameters could be associated with sepsis and/or survival. Twenty-one foals were included in the study: nine were healthy and 12 were sick. Retrospectively, sick foals were d...

Mirror self-recognition (MSR), investigated in primates and recently in non-primate species, is considered a measure of self-awareness. Nowadays, the only reliable test for investigating MSR potential skills consists in the untrained response to a visual body mark detected using a reflective surface. Here, we report the first evidence of MSR at gro...

Rein tension signals are, in essence, pressures applied on the horse’s mouth or nose, via the bit/noseband, by a rider or trainer. These pressures may feel uncomfortable or even painful to the horse and therefore it is important to reduce rein tension magnitude to a minimum. The aim of this study was to investigate the magnitude of a rein tension s...

Animals must attend to a diverse array of stimuli in their environments. The emotional valence and salience of a stimulus can affect how this information is processed in the brain. Many species preferentially attend to negatively valent stimuli using the sensory organs on the left side of their body and hence the right hemisphere of their brain. He...

When a rider maintains contact on the reins, rein tension will vary continuously in synchronicity with the horse's gait and stride. This continuous variation makes it difficult to isolate the rein tension variations that represent a rein tension signal, complicating interpretation of rein tension data from the perspective of horse-rider interaction...

In recent years, many studies on the role of oxytocin (OXT) in the onset of parental care, regulation of social bonding, and modulation of the emotional state have been published. However, its possible regulation of maternal behavior in lactating dogs has not been investigated yet. For this reason, the present study aimed at assessing potential cor...

In social animals, recognizing conspecifics and distinguishing them from other animal species is certainly important. We hypothesize, as demonstrated in other species of ungulates, that horses are able to discriminate between the faces of conspecifics and the faces of other domestic species (cattle, sheep, donkeys and pigs). Our hypothesis was test...

A human–animal relationship can be developed through subsequent interactions, affected by the positive or negative emotional valence of the proceeding one. Horses implement a process of categorization to classify humans with whom they interact as positive, negative, or neutral stimuli by evaluating the kind of approach and the nature of the contact...

Compared with other domestic animals, little is known about dietary preferences and feed palatability in equids. Furthermore, it is known that equids exhibit marked lateralization, that is, a preference for one side over the other, and that each individual differs in temperament. However, a gap in our knowledge exists regarding the influence of lat...

Background There are several bioengineering solutions aimed at improving human health and welfare. Smart electrodes based on textile substrates have met the growing demand for comfort, reliability, and robustness when acquiring physiological signals. Objectives Given the importance of good quality electrocardiograms (ECG) in equine sports medicine...

This pilot study aimed at investigating how salivary oxytocin levels are affected by human interaction and isolation in eight guide dogs (six Labrador retrievers and two golden retrievers; four males and four females, 21.87 ± 1.36 months old) just before assignment to the blind person. Each dog engaged, at one-week intervals, in a positive (5 min o...

Our work has been selected as the last issue Cover of MDPI Animals Journal

This work describes a novel signal quality index (SQI), i.e. higher-order-statistics-SQI (hosSQI), for the real-time evaluation of electrocardiogram (ECG) recording quality. The hosSQI formula combines two already known SQIs, kurtosis (kSQI) and skewness (sSQI), exploiting the related properties to improve their performance. We validated hosSQI usi...

Human body odors contain chemosignals that make species-specific communication possible. Such communication is without communicative intent and is generally below the threshold of consciousness. Human recipients of these chemosignals produced during emotional conditions display a simulacrum of the emotional state under which the chemosignal was pro...

Equine assisted interventions (EAIs) include all therapeutic interventions aimed at improving human wellbeing through the involvement of horses. Due to the prominent emotional involvement traditionally characterizing their relation with humans, horses developed sophisticated communicative skills, which fostered their ability to respond to human emo...

Aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of a carbohydrate-based diet on serotonin blood concentrations in phobic dogs. For this study were recruited, from a public shelter, three dogs (2 neutered females and 1 male), weighing between 15 and 30 kg and living in the shelter for more than six months. Dogs received by a veterinary behaviorist a d...

To manage a stressful stimulus animals react both behaviorally and physiologically to restore the homeostasis. In stable horses, a stressful stimulus can be represented by social separation, riding discomfort or the presence of novel objects in their environment. Although Heart Rate Variability is a common indicator of stress levels in horses, the...

In order to explore the decision-making processes of horses, we designed an impossible task paradigm aimed at causing an expectancy violation in horses. Our goals were to verify whether this paradigm is effective in horses by analyzing their motivation in trying to solve the task and the mode of the potential helping request in such a context. In t...

This paper reports on a novel real time index designed to assess the quality of electrocardiographic (ECG) traces recorded in a group of five horses during a submaximal treadmill test procedure. During the experimental protocol two ECG monitoring systems were simultaneously applied to the animals. The first system was equipped with textile electrod...

We examined the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activity of horses in response to human body odors (BOs) produced under happy and fear states. The ANS response of horses was analyzed in terms of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) features extracted in the frequency domain. Our results revealed that human BOs induce sympathetic and parasympathetic changes...

Individual animals vary in their behaviour and reactions to novel situations. These differences may extend to differences in cognition among individuals. We tested twenty-six horses for their ability to detour around symmetric and asymmetric obstacles. All of the animals were able to get around the barrier to reach a food target, but varied in thei...

Contents Reproductive management of male donkeys employed for artificial breeding has been poorly studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of housing system, with the animals grouped together in a paddock or kept in individual boxes, on sexual behaviour, cortisol and testosterone concentration and seminal characteristics of adult m...

Low intensity exercise increases insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in skeletal muscle and decreases its plasma concentration. In this study, plasma insulin and glucose concentrations were evaluated 5 min before and 5, 15, 25, 35, 45 and 60 min after an IV bolus of glucose in 12 Thoroughbreds before and after 1 month of submaximal aquatraining exerc...

This study focuses on the analysis of human-horse dynamic interaction using cardiovascular information exclusively. Specifically, the Information Theoretic Learning (ITL) approach has been applied to a Human-Horse Interaction paradigm, therefore accounting for the nonlinear information of the heart-heart interplay between humans and horses. Heartbe...

The impossible task paradigm provides insight into the decision-making processes, particularly in the realm of expectancy violation and consists of several solvable trials in which the experimental subject solves an easy task to obtain a reward, followed by an unsolvable trial in which the reward becomes unreachable. This paradigm is a useful tool...

Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) unveils complex cognitive, social and emotional skills and it has been found only in humans and few other species, such as great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies. In this pilot study, we tested if horses show the capacity of MSR. Four subjects living socially under naturalistic conditions were selected for the exp...

Raw data related to no mirror (absence of the mirror), Covered Mirror and Open Mirror conditions. (XLSX)

The area of scraping. Red dots delimit the area of the scraping (SCRA) behavior. (TIF)

Julia scrapes the left cheek. Julia scraps the left cheek with the yellow mark on her left foreleg (at 00.05) (the mark is visible in the reflecting image). Later, Julia gets close to the mirror (at 00.07), stares at it (at 00.13) and breathes close to it (00.15). At 00.19 she scraps again the left cheek on her right foreleg. (AVI)

Gina scraps the blue mark with the foreleg and the fence. Gina firstly scraps the blue marked cheek on her left foreleg (at 00.01). Then, she scraps the same marked cheek (left) towards the fence (at 00.10). (AVI)

Calippo performed the SCRA behavior even directed to the sham mark. This video refers to the test of day 4 when both cheeks of the horses were sham marked (SHAM). In this video Calippo clearly changes the inclination of his head (at 00.09) while staring at his left cheek reflected in the mirror. Then he scrapes his left cheek on his left foreleg tw...

Betsie approaches the mirror frontally. At 00.00 she comes from the B area of the L-shaped paddock and stops within the “mirror” area (from 00.02) to look her image. (AVI)

Julia approaches the mirror laterally. Since she has just been released from the starting position, Julia enters the “mirror” area from the left side (at 00.01 she turns her head towards the mirror). From 00.02 to 00.07 she stares at her image reflected on the surface. (AVI)

Calippo explores the surface of the mirror. He sniffs the mirror producing vapor traces on the reflecting surface while breathing very close to it (from 00.02 to 00.12). Calippo replicates the same behavior at 00.16 (from 00.16 to 00.22). (AVI)

Julia approaches the mirror for the first time. Julia is seeing herself reflected in it. Firstly, she shows hesitation (at 00.01 she withdraws); after, at 00.07, she gets close to the mirror, she turned her head towards the mirror and stares at her image (at 00.10 and again at 00.13). Later, Julia quickly moves to look behind the mirror (00.19). (A...

Calippo protrudes its tongue in front of the mirror repeatedly. Tongue protrusion (from 00.03 to 00.15) is probably a repetitive testing behavior to check the movement of the reflecting image. (AVI)

The beginning of the mirror exposure. At the beginning of the mirror exposure, the horses often performed behaviors such as staying in front of the mirror, exploring it and looking behind it in a very quickly sequence, as showed in this video. Gina looks towards the mirror from the left side of the “mirror” area (from 00.00), then she approaches th...

Raw data related to Sham and Mark (1 and 2) conditions. (XLSX)

La mente del cavallo controlla il suo comportamento con gli stessi meccanismi psicologici degli altri animali e dell’essere umano. Se anche spesso si sente parlare di “arte dell’equitazione”, non possiamo ignorare che il comportamento, la psicologia e l’etologia del cavallo sono scienza a tutti gli effetti. La relazione che abbiamo instaurato con q...

This paper focuses on the validation of smart textile electrodes used to acquire ECG signals in horses in a comfortable and robust manner. The performance of smart textile electrodes is compared with standard Ag/AgCl electrodes in terms of the percentage of Motion Artifacts (MAs, the noise that results from the movement of electrodes against the sk...

This study reports on a preliminary estimation of the human-horse interaction through the analysis of the heart rate variability (HRV) in both human and animal by using the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm. Here, we present a wearable system for HRV monitoring in horses. Specifically, we first present a validation of a wearable electrocardiogra...

We present a study focused on a quantitative estimation of a human-horse dynamic interaction. A set of measures based on magnitude and phase coupling between heartbeat dynamics of both humans and horses in three different conditions is reported: no interaction, visual/olfactory interaction and grooming. Specifically, Magnitude Squared Coherence (MS...

This study reports on a novel method to detect and reduce the contribution of movement artifact (MA) in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings gathered from horses in free movement conditions. We propose a model that integrates cardiovascular and movement information to estimate the MA contribution. Specifically, ECG and physical activity are continuou...

This study reports on the implementation of a novel system to detect and reduce movement artifact (MA) contribution in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings acquired from horses in free movement conditions. The system comprises both integrated textile electrodes for ECG acquisition and one triaxial accelerometer for movement monitoring. Here, ECG and...

Horses were domesticated 6000 years ago and since then different types of approaches have been developed to enhance the horse’s wellbeing and the human-horse relationship. Even though horse training is an increasingly important research area and many articles have been published on the subject, equitation is still the sport with the highest rate of...

In humans the expression of emotions varies with aging, but for domestic animals we have little information on this subject. Our aim was to verify the influence of aging (life experience) on the expression of emotions in horses (Equus caballus) in reaction to a stressful stimulus. A total of 98 horses were subjected to the sudden inflation of a bal...

Validity and reproducibility of anaerobic threshold (VLA4) is still matter for debate. Factors influencing blood lactate concentration, including blood collection procedure, are critical. This study aimed to evaluate influence of blood sampling times on VLA4 computing in two different horse breeds. Five Standardbreds and six Haflingers were include...

In recent years, considerable literature has been published on cognition in horses; however, much less is known about the cognitive abilities of domestic donkey (Equus asinus). This study aimed to expand our knowledge of donkey cognition by assessing their short-term memory capacity. We employed a detour problem com-bined with the classic delayed-r...

a b s t r a c t Catecholamines seem to play a role in equine exercise physiology that is somewhat different from their role in human beings. In sport horses, a greater increase in plasma adrenaline (ADR) levels occurs in response to strenuous exercise as compared with human beings. However, it is not known whether this is true for breeds not specif...

In this study, the detour problem was combined with the classic delayed-response task to investigate equine short-term spatial memory. Test subjects were eight female horses, divided into two groups (A and B) of four subjects each. The motivating object was made to move and disappear behind one of two identical obstacles in a two-point-choice appar...

An animal's ability to move around an obstacle to reach a target is called detour behavior. To perform such task the animal must first move away from its goal to subsequently reach it. The use of an asymmetric obstacle may provide information about the animal's spatial reasoning or spatial learning. With spatial reasoning, the subject directly choo...