TY - JOUR

T1 - Personality, coping patterns, and aggression in piglets

AU - Forkman, B.

AU - Furuhaug, I. L.

AU - Jensen, P.

N1 - Funding Information: We wish to thank the Uddetorp farming school for providing the experimental facilities and the animals. We gratefully acknowledge the practical help of Svein Furuhaug and Maria Alonso Spilsbury with the aggression test. Bjom Forkman and Per Jensen wish to acknowledge a grant from the Swedish Council for Forestry and Agricultural Research.

PY - 1995/10

Y1 - 1995/10

N2 - To search for a pattern of behaviour similar to the one found for active and passive coping strategies in rodents, we tested piglets in a series of different tests. One of the tests was a restraint test previously used by Hessing et al. (1993a,b). In this test the piglet was turned on its back and held there for 1 min while the number of escape attempts was counted. This first test was done on 65 piglets (males and females, 2 weeks of age). In our study the result of the back-test was unimodal, not bimodal as suggested by Hessing et al. (1993a,b). The back-test was then repeated over time on another group of piglets (once a week; all piglets female, n = 45, 1-5 weeks old). In addition, a number of other tests were done (8-10 weeks). These were tests designed to measure parameters that previous studies have shown to be correlated to the coping strategies of the animals: namely, extinction time, social dependence, reaction to a novel object, and aggression in an owner/intruder conflict. We did not find any correlation between the latency to attack and the parameters measured and thus found no evidence for the existence of active/passive copers in domestic pigs. A principal component analysis (that explained 60% of the total variation) suggested three personality traits: aggression (25%), sociability (20%) and exploration (15%).

AB - To search for a pattern of behaviour similar to the one found for active and passive coping strategies in rodents, we tested piglets in a series of different tests. One of the tests was a restraint test previously used by Hessing et al. (1993a,b). In this test the piglet was turned on its back and held there for 1 min while the number of escape attempts was counted. This first test was done on 65 piglets (males and females, 2 weeks of age). In our study the result of the back-test was unimodal, not bimodal as suggested by Hessing et al. (1993a,b). The back-test was then repeated over time on another group of piglets (once a week; all piglets female, n = 45, 1-5 weeks old). In addition, a number of other tests were done (8-10 weeks). These were tests designed to measure parameters that previous studies have shown to be correlated to the coping strategies of the animals: namely, extinction time, social dependence, reaction to a novel object, and aggression in an owner/intruder conflict. We did not find any correlation between the latency to attack and the parameters measured and thus found no evidence for the existence of active/passive copers in domestic pigs. A principal component analysis (that explained 60% of the total variation) suggested three personality traits: aggression (25%), sociability (20%) and exploration (15%).

KW - Aggression

KW - Coping

KW - Personality

KW - Pig

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0002276585&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/0168-1591(95)00601-N

DO - 10.1016/0168-1591(95)00601-N

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:0002276585

VL - 45

SP - 31

EP - 42

JO - Applied Animal Behaviour Science

JF - Applied Animal Behaviour Science

SN - 0168-1591

IS - 1-2

ER -