A novel emotional and cognitive approach to welfare phenotyping in rainbow trout exposed to poor water quality
Résumé
Recent scientific evidence for fish sentience has stressed the need for novel sentience-based detection tools of fish welfare impairment in commercial farms. In order to mimic a wellcharacterised stress situation, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were exposed to poor water quality (hypoxia combined with high ammonia level) for three weeks (stressed group, S) and compared to a non-stressed control group (NS). After a return to water quality shoaling behaviour. Farmers can use these first behavioural modifications as a sentinel detector for fish welfare impairment. More importantly, we demonstrated that reactivity to a human presence in a home-environment and food-anticipatory behaviour were both inhibited in the S group. We consider that these two sentience-based tests are highly relevant for fish welfare assessment at the group level and are easy to use in the aquaculture industry.
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