Do piglets (Sus scrofa domestica) use human visual and/or vocal signals to find hidden feeding reward? - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement Accéder directement au contenu
Poster De Conférence Année : 2016

Do piglets (Sus scrofa domestica) use human visual and/or vocal signals to find hidden feeding reward?

Résumé

Though animals rarely use only one sense to communicate, few studies have been done on the use of combinations of signals between animals and humans. Piglets’ ability to use human visual signals (i.e. pointing gestures) is not clearly demonstrated. They mainly use auditory signals to communicate with conspecifics and might be sensitive to human voice. This study was carried out on 28 weaned piglets. Among them, 16 piglets were submitted to a pre-test with object-choice task including four conditions to find the reward (‘experienced’ piglets): the experimenter statically pointed at the reward with (1) or without (2) directing a loudspeaker broadcasting vocal instructions to it; (3) the loudspeaker alone was directed to the reward or the experimenter stood motionless. All piglets were submitted to three successive individual objectchoice tasks related to combinations of human signals: (1) the experimenter statically pointed at the reward and directed the loudspeaker to it; (2) the experimenter used a dynamic pointing gesture and the loudspeaker (3) the experimenter performed again the first static combination. During the pre-test, piglets did not found the reward in any case (50.0±0.01% of mean success, P=0.42) and results suggest that previous experience did not influence success rates (mixed model analysis, P=0.58). Piglets found the reward in test 2 and 3 (respectively 63.4±2.1 and 61.6±2.1% of mean success, binomial tests P<0.05; test 1: 51.9±2.1%). Unexperienced piglets do not use vocal and visual signals but they can learn to use combinations of vocal and visual signals. The experience acquired on successive tests – a change from static to dynamic signal or a second presentation of a signal – could be more efficient than a previous stimuli exposure. Further investigation is needed to analyse individual variations in responses.
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Dates et versions

hal-02744121 , version 1 (03-06-2020)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-02744121 , version 1
  • PRODINRA : 369853

Citer

Sandy Bensoussan, Maude Cornil, Marie-Christine Meunier-Salaün, Céline Tallet. Do piglets (Sus scrofa domestica) use human visual and/or vocal signals to find hidden feeding reward?. 50. Meeting of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE), Jul 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2016, Proceedings of the 50th Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology. ⟨hal-02744121⟩
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