Quiz #2 Study Guide: Natural Living and Emotional States in Animal Welfare

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, behavioral definitions, brain structures, and welfare assessment tools from Modules 4 and 5.

Natural Living

A major approach to animal welfare focusing on allowing animals to perform behaviors important to them, emphasizing behavioral opportunities rather than solely preventing disease or suffering.

Ethology

The scientific study of animal behavior that helps welfare scientists understand normal species-specific behaviors.

Behavioral Repertoire

The complete range of behaviors that a species is capable of performing.

Ethogram

A detailed catalog of species-specific behaviors used by researchers to systematically record behavior.

Mechanism (Tinbergen's Four Questions)

The immediate physiological or environmental triggers that cause a behavior.

Development / Ontogeny (Tinbergen's Four Questions)

The process and factors governing how a behavior develops during an animal's life.

Function (Tinbergen's Four Questions)

How a specific behavior improves an animal's survival or reproduction.

Evolution / Phylogeny (Tinbergen's Four Questions)

The evolutionary history of how a behavior arose and changed over generations.

Behavioral Motivation

Strong internal drives in animals to perform specific behaviors, which are not necessarily eliminated by domestication.

Agency

The ability of an animal to make choices and influence outcomes, such as choosing where to rest, social partners, or when to explore.

Competence

The ability to successfully solve challenges and interact with the environment, developed through exploration, learning, play, and problem solving.

Habituation

A form of learning characterized by a decreased response to a repeated harmless stimulus, such as cows ignoring routine machinery sounds.

Sensitization

A form of learning characterized by an increased response to a repeated stimulus, such as an animal becoming increasingly fearful after repeated rough handling.

Classical Conditioning

A learning process involving the association between two stimuli, such as Pavlov's dogs salivating in response to a bell.

Operant Conditioning

A learning process in which behavior changes because of consequences, where rewards increase behavior and punishments decrease behavior.

Positive Welfare Indicators

Signs associated with good welfare, including play, exploration, curiosity, social interaction, and appropriate species-typical behaviors.

Stereotypies

Repetitive, unvarying abnormal behaviors with no obvious function, such as pacing, bar biting, and weaving.

Redirected Behaviors

Abnormal behaviors directed toward an alternative target, such as tail biting in pigs.

Self-Injurious Behaviors

Abnormal behaviors that cause self-harm, such as feather plucking.

Environmental Enrichment

Modifications or items provided to increase behavioral opportunities and allow animals to engage in meaningful and motivated behaviors.

Sentience

The capacity to have subjective experiences and feelings, serving as the foundation for why animal welfare matters.

Emotion

A short-term affective state, such as fear, frustration, joy, or curiosity.

Cognition

The mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses, including learning, memory, decision making, and attention.

Amygdala

A brain structure that processes threats and emotional significance, playing a critical role in fear responses.

Hippocampus

A brain structure primarily involved in learning and memory.

Hypothalamus

A brain structure that regulates physiological stress responses.

Thalamus

A brain structure that relays sensory information.

Cognitive Bias

The tendency of an animal to interpret ambiguous situations optimistically or pessimistically.

Cognitive Bias Test

A welfare assessment method where animals are trained on positive and negative cues and then presented with ambiguous cues to infer affective state based on their anticipation.

Qualitative Behavioral Assessment (QBA)

A welfare assessment method that evaluates the overall expression or style of behavior by assessing how behaviors are performed rather than counting them.