Abstract
Despite the fact that animal posture is known to reflect emotional state, the presence of chronic postures associated with poor welfare has not been investigated with an objective tool for measuring, quantifying and comparing postures. The use of morphometric geometrics (GM) to describe horse posture (profile of the dorsum) has shown to be an effective method of distinguishing populations that are known to differ in terms of welfare states. Here we investigated photographs of 85 riding school horses differing in terms of welfare state, in order to determine if a specific posture (modelled by GM) is associated with altered welfare. The welfare state was estimated with the prevalence of stereotypic or abnormal repetitive behaviours, depressed-like posture and the ear positions. ANOVA results show that horses with stereotypic or abnormal behaviour, and to a lesser degree horses with depressed-like postures, tend to have a flatter, or even hollow, dorsal profile, especially at the neck and croup levels. These altered profiles could represent an additional indicator of poor welfare, easy to use in the field or by owners.
Highlights
The early descriptions by Darwin in 1872 [1] of the expression of emotions in man and animals indicated that postures and emotions are clearly interrelated: changes in agonistic postures accompanying aggressive encounters in birds [2,3], dogs [4] and cats [1]; emotional responses to challenging situations in ungulates [5,6,7], fear or anxiety in dogs, mice [8] and other animals [9,10]
Large differences between schools were observed in the welfare indicators recorded: Depending on the riding school, 0 to 100% of the horses displayed stereotypic behaviours” (SB)/abnormal repetitive behaviours” (ARB) (Monte-Carlo chi-squared, p = 0.002) (Table 1), 0 to 60% (N = 15, 18%) presented the depressed-like posture (Monte-Carlo chi-squared, p = 0.024), 0 to 90% (N = 31, 27%) had predominantly backwards ears whereas 0 to 75% had predominantly forward ears (Monte-Carlo chi-squared, p = 0.020)
The application of 2 different methods of geometric morphometrics in two situations on the shape of the whole dorsum or parts of it reveals surprisingly consistent results: overall stereotypic or depressed horses living in restricted conditions are characterized by a flat or hollow back, neck and croup shape with a prominent withers
Summary
The early descriptions by Darwin in 1872 [1] of the expression of emotions in man and animals indicated that postures and emotions are clearly interrelated: changes in agonistic postures accompanying aggressive encounters in birds [2,3], dogs [4] and cats [1]; emotional responses to challenging situations in ungulates [5,6,7], fear or anxiety in dogs, mice [8] and other animals [9,10] These postures are well known, precise quantitative evaluation is often lacking, while this would be of great interest for comparing situations or emotional states.
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