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The effect of the pre-weaning play on the coping ability of piglets
Večlová, Barbora ; Chaloupková, Helena (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
This diploma thesis is focused on animal play behaviour, it's features and factors that influence it. It also shows how play can be used as an animal welfare indicator and moreover that play may also improve welfare. Play is interesting from physiology and neurology point of view as well because it is able to trigger positive emotions. This thesis also describes the main hypotheses explaing evolutionary functions of play. The newest hypothesis claims that play may be a "training for the unexpected"(Špinka et al., 2001). Our experiments tested this hypothesis. We investigated if play of piglets before weaning could improve their coping with stress and reduce agonistic behaviour after weaning and later in life. Results show that play in an extra space before weaning does not influence pig's behaviour very much, but it seems to have some impact. Results also show other factors influencing agonistic behaviour of pigs - groupsize, gender and weight gain.
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The effect of the pre-weaning play on the coping ability of piglets
Večlová, Barbora ; Chaloupková, Helena (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
This diploma thesis is focused on animal play behaviour, it's features and factors that influence it. It also shows how play can be used as an animal welfare indicator and moreover that play may also improve welfare. Play is interesting from physiology and neurology point of view as well because it is able to trigger positive emotions. This thesis also describes the main hypotheses explaing evolutionary functions of play. The newest hypothesis claims that play may be a "training for the unexpected"(Špinka et al., 2001). Our experiments tested this hypothesis. We investigated if play of piglets before weaning could improve their coping with stress and reduce agonistic behaviour after weaning and later in life. Results show that play in an extra space before weaning does not influence pig's behaviour very much, but it seems to have some impact. Results also show other factors influencing agonistic behaviour of pigs - groupsize, gender and weight gain.
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Characteristics and use of play signals
Palečková, Marie ; Špinka, Marek (advisor) ; Polák, Jakub (referee)
There are many different behavioural elements and patterns in play behaviour. A play sequence may include elements which are unique for play and also elements which are similar to movements from other behavioural contexts such as predation, aggressive behaviour or sexual behaviour. One group of the play-unique elements are play signals. Play signals are highly ritualized movements or gestures and animals use them for communicating their playfull intentions to their play partners. These actions can be used in the beginnig of a play bout for initiation of social play, or during the play bout when they are used to maintain social play in situations when the play could be interrupted by patterns from serious behaviour or could be broken off. Many scientists started to focuse their research on play behaviour and play signals in the past fifty years. However, there is still lack of sequence analysis of play of particular species. More of such analysis could bring out new interesting findings.
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