John W.S. Bradshaw’s research while affiliated with University of Bristol and other places

Practical relevance Cats are descended from a solitary, territorial ancestor, and while domestication has reduced their inherited tendency to be antagonistic towards all animals larger than their typical prey, they still place more reliance on the security of their territory than on psychological attachments to people or other cats, the exact opposite to dogs. Many feline problem behaviours stem from perceived threats to this security, often due to conflicts with other cats. Others are more developmental in origin, often caused by inadequate exposure to crucial stimuli, especially people, during the socialisation period. Strongly aversive events experienced at any age can also contribute. A third category comprises normal behaviour that owners deem unacceptable, such as scratching of furniture. Evidence base This review identifies three areas in which basic research is inadequate to support widely employed concepts and practices in feline behavioural medicine. First, classification of cats’ problem behaviours relies heavily on approaches derived from studies of their behavioural ecology and, to some extent, extrapolation from canine studies. Few studies have focused on cats in the home, the environment in which most behavioural disorders are expressed. Secondly, cats’ chemical senses (olfactory and vomeronasal) are far more sensitive than our own, making it difficult for owners or clinicians to fully comprehend the sensory information upon which they base their behaviour. Thirdly, although the concept of psychological distress is widely invoked as an intervening variable in behavioural disorders, there are still no reliable measures of distress for pet cats in the home. Global importance Psychological distress of some kind is the primary cause of many of the behavioural problems presented to clinicians, but surveys indicate that many more cats display the same clinical signs without their owners ever seeking help. The welfare of this ‘invisible’ group could be improved by veterinarians taking a more proactive approach to educating their clients about the behavioural needs of pet cats.

In the diagnosis and treatment of behavioural disorders in multi-cat households, it is often assumed that a dominance hierarchy exists between the cats ( e.g. Crowell-Davis, 2002). While such hierarchies are probably commonplace among dogs, what evidence there is to support the existence of social hierarchies in groups of domestic cats has mainly been gathered from reproductively entire animals, such as single sex laboratory colonies, and free-ranging aggregations of ferals. For example, Natoli et al. (2001) used receipt of “submissive” (defensive) behaviour to construct a weakly linear hierarchy in a group of 14 farm cats, but this did not correspond to the hierarchy derived from receipt of affiliative behaviour. We have investigated the alternative hypotheses that apparent dominance hierarchies in multi-cat households may actually be based upon territorial behaviour, or some other undetermined social system.

It is often claimed that certain dominance-related problems in dogs can be triggered by the games played by dog and owner. In particular it is thought that allowing a dog to win uncontrolled games such as Tug-of-War will increase the likelihood of it attempting to become dominant over its owner. However questionnaires (Goodloe & Borchelt, 1998) and experimental studies of Labrador and Golden Retrievers (Rooney & Bradshaw, 2002) have found no evidence for these postulated effects. In this paper we further investigate possible links between the types of games played in the domestic environment and both dominance and attachment dimensions of the dog-owner relationship.

Separation anxiety/separation-related behavior problems (SA/SRB) are a significant cause of abandonment and failure of rehoming in dogs. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of providing written advice to adopters of dogs, aimed at reducing the risk of SA/SRB occurring in the new home. An opportunity sample of 176 dogs was taken from animals rehomed over a 13 month period. Adopters of dogs were allocated alternately to two groups, experimental (treatment) and no treatment (control). Adopters in the control group were given advice about healthcare. Adopters in the treatment group received behavioral advice, designed to prevent SA/SRB. Efficacy of the advice was measured 12 weeks after rehoming, when owners were asked to complete a postal questionnaire detailing their dog’s behavior when alone, as well as other factors previously suggested to influence the occurrence of SA/SRB. Overall, 53 (30%) of the dogs were reported to show SA/SRB (38% of the control group and 22% of the treatment group). Younger dogs were more likely to show SA/SRB and neutered females showed lower levels of SA/SRB. Although compliance with the advice was generally poor and varied between recommendations, dogs in the control group were more likely to show signs of SA/SRB than those in the treatment group, and hence the provision of written advice to adopters appears to be effective in reducing the development of SA/SRB following rehoming.

We here respond to the claim by Schilder and colleagues (Schilder, M. B. H., Vinke, C. M., van der Borg, J. A. M., 2014. Dominance in domestic dogs revisited: Useful habit and useful construct? J. Vet. Behav.: Clin. App. Res. 9, 184-191) that dominance is a useful construct in the interpretation of companion dog behavior. We first make the distinction between the well-established use of the dominance framework in the ethology of wild species, and its more contentious use in the domestic dog as a character trait and as a descriptor of motivation. By evaluating recent studies of canine “personality” (individual differences in behavior that are consistent across time and context), we conclude that there is no evidence that dominance is a character trait of individual dogs, but rather that it is a property of relationships, that can arise due to asymmetries in any one of at least 3 distinct personality traits. We question whether concepts derived from wolf behavior have much utility in interpreting the behavior of domestic dogs because recent studies of groups of free-ranging dogs confirm that the dog has lost 3 traits key to the social organization of the gray wolf, namely coordinated group hunting, reproductive suppression, and provisioning of cubs by nonreproducing relatives. We further question whether studies of free-ranging dogs, which routinely compete for physical resources, provide an appropriate framework for interpreting the behavior of companion dogs, which generally do not. We then reinterpret Schenkel's “active submission” posture as primarily affiliative and an indicator of the dependence of younger, inexperienced dogs on the older members of their social group. By reviewing the key literature on the cognitive abilities of domestic dogs and other social Carnivora, we demonstrate that the primate-based “Utrecht School” model of dominance makes assumptions that are invalid for domestic dogs, because the overwhelming balance of evidence indicates that relationships among social Carnivora are based on noncognitive mechanisms. We conclude by examining the implications of Schilder and colleagues' model for the management of relationships between dogs and their owners.

The domestic cat is the only member of the Felidae to form social relationships with humans, and also, the only small felid to form intraspecific social groups when free ranging. The latter are matriarchies, and bear only a superficial similarity to those of the lion and cheetah, which evolved separately and in response to very different selection pressures. There is no evidence for intraspecific social behavior in the ancestral species Felis silvestris, and hence, the capacity for group formation almost certainly evolved concurrently with the self-domestication of the cat during the period 10,000 to 5,000 years before present. Social groups of F. catus are characterized by cooperation among related adult females in the raising of kittens from parturition onward and competition between adult males. Unlike more social Carnivora, cats lack ritualized submissive signals, and although "peck-order" hierarchies can be constructed from exchanges of aggressive and defensive behavior, these do not predict reproductive success in females, or priority of access to key resources, and thus do not illuminate the basis of normal cat society. Cohesion in colonies of cats is expressed as, and probably maintained by, allorubbing and allogrooming; transmission of scent signals may also play a largely uninvestigated role. The advantages of group living over the ancestral solitary territorial state have not been quantified adequately but are likely to include defense of permanent food sources and denning sites and protection against predators and possibly infanticide by invading males. These presumably outweigh the disadvantages of communal denning, enhanced transmission of parasites, and diseases. Given the lack of archaeological evidence for cats kept as pets until some 4,000 years before present, intraspecific social behavior was most likely fully evolved before interspecific sociality emerged. Signals directed by cats toward their owners fall into 3 categories: those derived from species-typical actions, such as jumping up, that become signals by association; signals derived from kitten-to-mother communication (kneading, meow); and those derived from intraspecific cohesive signals. Social stress appears widespread among pet cats, stemming from both agonistic relationships within households and territorial disputes with neighborhood cats, but simple solutions seem elusive, most likely because individual cats vary greatly in their reaction to encounters with other cats.

Sociality motivation, the need to feel socially connected with others, has been proposed as an important determinant of individual variation in anthropomorphic thinking. Specifically, it has been suggested that people who are socially isolated or disconnected will tend to infer more human-like mental states in animals and other nonhuman agents (computers, robots, metaphysical beings, etc.), than those who have higher levels of contact with other people. We investigated this hypothesis in a community-based sample of cat and dog owners, measuring degree of anthropomorphism by asking them which emotions they believed their pet was capable of experiencing, how likely they were to rely on it for social support, and how attached they were to it. Structural measures of social disconnection, including the number of other adults living in the household and the number of social contacts outside the home, were not generally associated with the tendency to think anthropomorphically about pets. However, owners living in households with no children (under the age of 16 years) reported higher levels of attachment to their pet than did those with children (B = 1.678, p F (1,244) = 4.997, p 2 = 0.020). In addition, a trait-based indicator of social disconnection (self-reported anxiety about human social relationships) was associated with a heightened tendency for owners to report turning to their pet for support (F (1,244) = 19.617, p 2 = 0.074), and attributing more human-like emotions to it (F (1,244) = 8.354, p 2 = 0.033). These findings support a link between social disconnection and anthropomorphic thinking in a community setting; they also suggest that different forms of social disconnection (structural and trait-based) may generate different types of sociality motivation, and thereby influence different facets of anthropomorphic thinking.

Our understanding of the welfare of companion animals is both incomplete and fragmentary. For domestic dogs, most research has focused on animals that do not have stable relationships with people, such as dogs in laboratories and rehoming kennels. The welfare of pet dogs has received limited attention, presumably due to an assumption that owners have their best interests at heart. However, owners' conceptions of their companion's needs can be inconsistent or even contradictory. Dogs are, on the one hand, sentimentalised via anthropomorphic interpretations, but on the other, mythologized as the descendants of savage wolves requiring harsh correction before they will conform to the demands of living alongside people. Canine welfare science attempts to replace such mythos with objective norms that have proved effective when applied to other domesticated species. However, animal welfare science is rarely value-free or unambiguous, since it has variously been defined in terms of physical health, psychological well-being, and the freedom to perform 'natural' behaviour. Here we attempt to strike a balance between each of these approaches while addressing a wide variety of current issues in canine welfare, including: concerns arising from the breeding of pedigree dogs; inappropriate training methods; and the widespread occurrence of behavioural disorders. We finish by describing some barriers to improvement in dog welfare, including owners' anthropomorphisms, the challenges of finding reliable indicators of well-being, and the effects of applying erroneous conceptual frameworks to the dog-owner relationship. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. All rights are reserved.