How Studying Interactions Between Animal Emotions, Cognition, and Personality Can Contribute to Improve Farm - Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals - page 93

different contexts. Another possibility is that the same underlying fear may
result in different behaviors, depending on situation. When horses were
confronted with a range of frightening stimuli, such as a traffic cone,
white noise and the smell of eucalyptus oil, the resulting heart-rate was
correlated between situations while the behaviors were not. The authors
explained this by a non-differentiated activation of the sympathetic nervous
system (heart-rate),

and a stimulus-specific link of the behavior

( Christensen et al., 2005 ).
Many situations give rise to several aspects of personality. Calves placed
into an open-field (social isolation in a novel environment) and confronted
with novel objects showed avoidance and cortisol responses that were interre-
lated. These were interpreted as reflecting underlying fearfulness. Locomotion
and vocalization in the open-field, however, were independent, and interpreted
as reflecting other personality traits, such as activity and sociality ( Van
Reenen et al., 2005 ). Fear of people may also increase a female's motivation
to defend its offspring, with dangerous consequences for the stockperson
( Turner and Lawrence, 2007 ).

Consistency of Fear-Related Responses Over Time
The concept of personality includes an element of consistency over time.
In horses that were put in social isolation, the frequency of neighing was found
to be well correlated with other behaviors displayed in the same test, but also
over time, from 8 months to 2.5 years of age ( Lansade et al.,2008b ). A similar
result was found for the horses' reaction to humans. Various behavioral
reactions—such as the frequency of licking/nibbling a person, the time taken
to touch the horse and to fit a halter—were significantly correlated across time
( Lansade and Bouissou, 2008 ).
Beef cattle going through a handling system (squeeze chute) they were
familiar with showed consistent differences in flight speed when tested twice
on the same day, but also one month apart ( M¨ ller and Von Keyserlingk,
2006 ). In another study, the flight speed showed consistency over time,
the behavior while in the crush did not ( Cafe et al., 2011 ). In another study
( Benhajali et al., 2010 ), however, the behavior during constraint in a chute
was repeatable across years. The cattle used were of very different genetic
backgrounds and from different production systems (Canada, Australia, and
France). It is, therefore, not always possible to generalize tests from one
system/breed to another. While we are recording the behavior of the animals,
we must not forget that this behavior is a result of underlying emotions,
which are dependent on how the animals interpret the situation (see the
previous section). The reaction of a dairy cow and of a beef cow from an
extensive range system towards a human will not be the same. While in one
case the human is familiar and may be associated with positive experiences,
in the other he might be regarded as a predator.