Search Results (1,516)

Research on cattle feeding and nutrition has increasingly integrated animal welfare considerations in response to evolving scientific, societal, and production challenges. This study aimed to characterise the global scientific landscape on this topic through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. A structured methodological framework was applied using the Web of Science database, covering the period from 2009 to 2025, limited to literature published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The analysis followed five stages: research design, data collection, analysis, visualisation, and interpretation, using a broad search strategy combining terms related to cattle production, nutrition, feeding, health, stress, and welfare. Bibliometric indicators and science mapping techniques were implemented using the Bibliometrix package in R (Biblioshiny), including collaboration network analysis, keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution, and Bradford’s Law to identify core journals. In total, 424 documents were analysed. The results showed sustained growth in scientific production, particularly from 2016 onwards, indicating consolidation of the field. Output was concentrated in a limited number of countries, institutions, and journals, supported by increasingly interconnected collaboration networks. Thematic trends revealed a shift towards integrative approaches linking nutrition with stress, health, and productivity, positioning nutrition as a key tool to enhance welfare and efficiency, although behavioural and socio-economic aspects remain underrepresented. Full article

Habitat selection is often activity-specific, as animals may use different environments depending on whether they are foraging, breeding, or moving through the habitat. Behavioural studies of nocturnal species are challenging, and conventional methods are limited in their applicability. In this study, we tested a thermal drone in combination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) for focal animal sampling and habitat use of mesopredators. A drone mounted with a thermal video camera recorded the movements and behaviours of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), European badgers (Meles meles), and Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra), while simultaneously geocoding their position. Additionally, we tested an AI-based analysis, LabGym for species and behaviour detection of video recordings. In Danish agricultural areas, both habitat separation and spatial overlap among the three mesopredators, were observed. Foxes showed a higher degree of versatility in both behaviour and habitat choice compared to badgers and otters. Otters were primarily found near water bodies, while badgers preferred foraging under tree cover and in meadows. The optimised LabGym achieved 80.4% mAP for species identification and successfully classified four behaviours with more than 80% accuracy. Using the thermal drone in combination with geolocation data and AI enables spatial mapping of mesopredator activities, adding valuable insights into predator ecology. Full article

On-farm welfare assessment of equines is a challenge given the large diversity of management practices, especially in terms of housing and activities. In our study, we tested time budget measures as a complementary tool to more conventional welfare indicators (e.g., stereotypic behaviours, ear position while foraging, neck shape). We observed 174 horses living in eight facilities (in their home environment) for which data on management practices and welfare were available. Time budget was assessed using the scan sampling method (1 min scan sampling over 30 min; 33 scans), while welfare assessment was based on classical measures. The study was performed in two parts: The first part consisted of validating time budget as a correlate of welfare state, which was performed at the individual level and according to the context of observation. In the second part, the data were analysed at the farm level by averaging data from all horses in the same facility. The results showed that the time spent feeding, in exploratory walking and observation behaviour were correlated with indicators of positive welfare and/or good practices in contrast to the time spent standing immobile resting or in fixed attention and/or in negative social interactions. Time budget varied greatly between facilities, reflecting welfare state and management (feeding, working) practices. This study shows that, provided that observations are made at different time periods when animals are calm, three sessions of 10 min. could give a good account of the local «atmosphere». These findings bring new insights into both methodological approaches and the significance of behaviours and, in particular, the importance of precisely defining and measuring the types of attention as a window into an animal’s internal state. Full article

Moving zoo animals to new enclosures is a normal part of zoo management, but little is known about how animals respond to these changes. Understanding how species adjust after a move can help zoos improve animal management and support smoother transitions between enclosures. This study investigated the behaviour and enclosure use of 121 Chilean flamingos at WWT Slimbridge after they moved from an enclosure that may have housed flamingos for up to 60 years into a newly designed environment. Animal care staff photographed the flock once daily before afternoon feeding and recorded the number of birds foraging, moving, preening, or inactive. The presence of wild birds, visitors, and staff was also recorded to assess possible influences on behaviour. Behaviour in the new enclosure was compared with activity levels previously recorded in the former enclosure. Results showed that flamingos spent more time foraging in the first month post-move and were more often seen in their pool. Activity did not differ between the former and new enclosures. This research provides important information on how flamingos respond to a housing change, showing that birds are more explorative of their new environment before settling into a previously documented routine. Flamingo preening showed an association with wild birds (increase preening) and visitor presence (reduced preening). Such human influences should be further investigated to determine whether flamingos change behaviour due to visitors or whether flamingo activity draws more visitors to the exhibit. Ultimately, our research shows that flamingos settle quickly into a new environment and do not display obvious signs of discomfort when a move is well planned and when enclosure modifications consider species’ natural history. We show the usefulness of a quick-and-easy data collection protocol, implemented by animal care staff, to the continual monitoring and evaluation of zoo husbandry. Full article

Background: The growing demand for safe and effective phytopharmaceuticals underscores the importance of studying regionally available medicinal plants. Acorus calamus L. and Calendula officinalis L., widely distributed in the Republic of Kazakhstan, are promising sources of biologically active compounds with significant pharmacological potential. However, the combined use of their CO₂ extracts remains insufficiently characterised, particularly regarding possible synergistic interactions. Therefore, the development of new dosage forms and their comprehensive pharmacological and toxicological evaluation is a priority in modern pharmaceutical research. Methods: Concentrated extracts from Acorus calamus rhizomes and Calendula officinalis flowers were obtained using precritical CO₂ extraction. Safety was assessed through acute and chronic toxicity studies in laboratory animals according to standard non-clinical guidelines. Animals received graded doses of the extracts and developed formulations (‘Exkair’ tablets and ‘Zerp-Ak-Broncho’ granules). Clinical condition, mortality, body weight, and behaviour were monitored. Biochemical, haematological, and histopathological analyses were performed. Antitussive activity was evaluated in vivo by measuring oedema inhibition relative to reference drugs. Results: The CO₂ extracts and formulations demonstrated low toxicity and good tolerability, with no mortality or significant adverse effects observed even at high doses. Biochemical and haematological parameters remained within physiological ranges, and histopathological examination revealed no structural alterations in internal organs. Both ‘Exkair’ and ‘Zerp-Ak-Broncho’ exhibited pronounced antitussive activity, confirmed by significant suppression of oedema. This effect is likely associated with the synergistic action of flavonoids, terpenoids, and phenolic compounds. Conclusions: The findings indicate that CO₂ extracts of Acorus calamus L. and Calendula officinalis L., as well as the developed formulations, possess a favourable safety profile and significant antitussive activity. These results support their further development as phytotherapeutic agents in Kazakhstan. Full article

Background/Objectives: Obesity represents a growing public health concern worldwide. Chrononutrition, a research field examining the timing and regularity of food intake, has been shown in animal models to influence body weight regulation and obesity-related outcomes. Previous research has also explored the association between chrononutrition information and BMI. Using INRAN-SCAI 2005/2006 adult nutrition data based on 3-day diet diaries (n = 2312), this study aims to assess whether chrononutritional information on the distribution of energy intake during the day is able to improve prediction of overweight status (BMI > 25 kg/m²), compared to information on energy from the whole day alone. Methods: This research investigates it using logistic regression and random forest models. For both types of models, three different specifications were compared: a model trained on the mean and irregularity of calorie intake over 3 days for 6 day-time intervals (MI6); a model trained on repeated measures over 3 days of calorie intake from the same 6 time intervals (RM); and a model trained on mean and irregularity of calorie intake over 3 days for the whole day (MID). The performance of the models was compared using risk prediction metrics and ROC curves. Results: When including additional demographic and behavioural predictors beside the energy variables, the results only showed a statistically significant difference in the performance of the logistic regression models if they were trained and tested on the same data. The models trained using chrononutrition information performed better, but the difference in diagnostic accuracy was very small (AUC = 0.7909 for MI6, p = 0.0086; 0.7923 for RM compared to 0.7850 for MID, p = 0.0072) and possibly attributable to overfitting, as it was no longer significant in the comparison within a testing set (70% training and 30% testing samples). For the random forest models, no significant difference was found. In the same models including only the energy variables, the improved performance of MI6 and RM was significantly better than for MID also in the test set (respectively, p = 0.0001 and p = 0.0002), and the gap in AUCs became substantial (AUC = 0.622 for MI6, 0.618 for RM and 0.507 for MID), indicating that socio-demographic and behavioural variables encapsulate information on energy intake by time of the day. Typical under-reporting bias present in nutritional epidemiology and the cross-sectional nature of the sample based on 3-day diaries may have affected these results, although use of diet diaries should minimize recall bias. Conclusions: In conclusion, the impact on health of timing and regularity of calorie intake in the day may act through other mechanisms than via overweight and may be captured by other demographic and behavioural variables; larger and prospective longitudinal studies are warranted to thoroughly investigate the added value of time-of-day information. Full article

The way robots represent the environment, make decisions, and express themselves can positively influence human–robot interaction if they clearly communicate their intentions and needs. To improve human–robot communication, biologically inspired models that mimic human communication skills, including task and scenario-specific contextual information, can facilitate mutual understanding and successful task execution. This paper presents a Context-Awareness and Biologically Inspired Behaviour system to generate a more natural human–robot interaction. The architecture combines sensory information processed by a Joint Attention System that prioritises stimuli based on internal processes with task-related motivations to generate context- and goal-adapted verbal and non-verbal interaction. We evaluate the system through a video-based user study that compares two robots with similar appearances but different behaviours, one using the proposed approach and the other not using the internal state and joint attention mechanisms, to make verbal and non-verbal responses. The results show that participants rated the robot endowed with the proposed system as significantly more sociable, agentic, and animated than the robot without it. Additionally, the robot not showing the responses developed in this work was perceived as more disturbing than the robot integrating the proposed system. Full article

A growing body of empirical study recognises a tendency for users to form (para)social bonds with Large Language Models, even when users know explicitly that these systems lack interiority or personhood. This contribution argues that such attachments arise from evolved human capacities to attribute being, moral status and, in some ways, ‘soul’ to nonhuman others—and that this capacity now operates without the belief-systems that have historically mediated it. When users encounter helpful, patient, emotionally available behaviour in conversational agents, they project the interior states that would produce those behaviours in themselves: authentic interiority and phenomenal consciousness. Humans have been making such assessments throughout our cultural history, developing ontologies and theologies for managing our relations with nonhuman, mythic and spiritual others. By contrast, modernity has disenchanted its landscapes, dismantling these cultural models even as the ‘ensouling architecture’ of our social and semiotic cognition remained unchanged. Contemporary users thus encounter machine others through the same neurocognitive lens as their ancestors did with spirits and animals on enchanted, animate landscapes, but without the mediation of culture, norm and taboos which place a premium on appropriate conduct, reciprocity and moderation. The resulting condition—a ‘Turing Animism’—leads users to ‘feel soul’ where there is only simulacrum. Full article

Dogs’ societal roles have shifted globally. In private spheres, dogs are increasingly regarded as family and granted legal protections, but in public, they are framed as dangerous and subjected to increased legal restrictions. Changing perceptions of dogs and differences in the law’s beneficiaries may influence how people develop legal knowledge. Where enforcement is limited or challenging, legal knowledge becomes an important component of the law’s capacity to shape behaviour. Using the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study, we examined people’s knowledge of 22 laws, divided between UK-wide current laws, nation-specific laws, and plausible hypothetical laws representing high-priority issues. We conducted a nationally representative survey with 1758 participants, split equally across the four UK nations. We first conducted exploratory model-building to identify variables associated with knowledge and then analysed these variables using multinomial models. Accurate legal knowledge among the UK public was limited, with participants frequently overestimating the existence of laws that prioritise dogs and their owners. Dog owners responded with greater certainty but not greater accuracy than non-dog owners. Older participants were more accurate overall, while responses to hypothetical laws suggested generational differences in views on animal welfare. These findings suggest gaps between the law in reality and what people assume the law to be. Full article

This study addresses pressure regulation in an induction-motor-driven centrifugal fan and introduces two complementary novelties: a Softsign-PI controller that shapes the tracking error via a Softsign nonlinearity before PI regulation and a hybrid starfish optimization with a differential evolution (hSFOA-DE) scheme for automatically tuning the controller parameters. The approach is evaluated on an experimentally validated nonlinear fan–motor model and benchmarked against modern metaheuristics—starfish optimization algorithm (SFOA), animated oat optimization (AOO), electric eel foraging optimization (EEFO), differential evolution (DE), particle swarm optimization (PSO)—as well as classical tunings—Murrill-based 2-DOF PID, Tyreus–Luyben PID and Ziegler–Nichols PI. Statistical summaries and boxplots indicate superior central tendency with reduced run-to-run variability; fitness–evolution curves show faster convergence; and time-domain performance metrics confirm improved transient and steady-state behaviour. Objective function comparisons further show the lowest values of both the Zwe-Lee Gaing (ZLG) and integral of absolute error (IAE), supporting advantages in robustness and tracking accuracy of the proposed approach. These gains reduce overshoot and cumulative error, which can lessen throttling losses and actuator duty in fan/pump service, suggesting potential energy and maintenance benefits. Full article

Despite growing interest in human–animal interactions in livestock, limited information is available on whether differences in routine human contact in the home flock have lasting effects on sheep behaviour and physiological stress responses after transfer to a new herd. This study evaluated behavioural and cortisol related responses in 191 Polish Mountain sheep from five farms that were seasonally combined into one traditional Carpathian grazing flock. Before grazing, farms were classified according to selected characteristics of farmer contact with sheep, including, time spent with the flock, handling style, consistency of interaction, and farmer behaviour towards the animals. Sheep behavioural responses during milking were assessed by the shepherd and an independent observer using a five point scale in two observation periods and serum cortisol concentration was measured in ten sheep per farm. Behavioural scores were analysed using a cumulative link mixed model, with evaluator and season as fixed effects and farm and sheep identity nested within the farm as random effects. Descriptive mean behavioural scores ranged from 2.18 to 4.38, and mean cortisol concentrations ranged from 2.49 to 4.86. Farm level patterns suggested that sheep from farms with more favourable human contact tended to show calmer behaviour during milking and lower cortisol concentrations. These findings indicate that routine human contact in the home flock may be associated with later behavioural and physiological responses under communal grazing conditions. Full article

Generally, ixodid ticks are important ectoparasites of cattle, including those in smallholder production systems in the Eastern Cape Province, where varying environmental conditions influence their distribution and feeding behaviour. This study investigated ecological variation in tick species composition and attachment site preferences in Bos taurus cattle across coastal and inland areas of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Ticks were collected from cattle of different ages, sexes, breeds, and body condition scores. Sampling was conducted prior to acaricide treatment, and ticks were manually removed from standard predilection sites on each animal. Specimens were preserved in 70% ethanol and later identified morphologically at the Döhne Agricultural Development Institute Laboratory. Data were analysed using generalized linear mixed models with a negative binomial distribution to assess the effects of host and environmental factors on tick burden. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise species composition, while inferential statistics were applied to evaluate differences in infestation levels across host-related and spatial variables. A total of 3250 adult ixodid ticks were collected from cattle. The most prevalent species was Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) decoloratus (39.7%), followed by Rhipicephalus evertsi evertsi (21.0%), Amblyomma hebraeum (17.7%), Hyalomma rufipes (5.8%), Ixodes pilosus (5.8%), Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus (4.5%), R. appendiculatus (3.0%), and R. simus (2.5%). Tick burdens were significantly higher in the coastal zone (85 ± 7.5) than in semi-arid inland areas (62 ± 5.9). Attachment site analysis showed significantly higher infestation levels (p < 0.05) on the udder/scrotum compared to other body regions. This study provides baseline information on tick species composition and attachment site ecology in cattle, contributing to improved understanding of host–parasite interactions and supporting the development of targeted, region-specific tick control strategies. Full article

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) has emerged as an approach in modern animal production, integrating advanced technologies such as sensors, automation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to enable continuous, individualised monitoring of livestock and their environment. This review examines the impact of PLF technologies on three critical dimensions of livestock systems: productivity, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability. PLF applications, including wearable and environmental sensors, automated feeding and milking systems, and video-based monitoring, allow for early detection of health and behavioural deviations, optimisation of feed efficiency, and improved reproductive and disease management. These technologies support proactive, data-driven decision-making that enhances productivity while promoting animal welfare and reducing the environmental footprint of livestock production. Despite these benefits, the adoption of PLF faces significant challenges, including high initial investment costs, technical limitations, system integration issues, data ownership and privacy concerns, and ethical considerations related to automation. Future research and policy efforts should focus on developing cost-effective, scalable solutions, standardised data frameworks, and supportive regulatory measures to enable equitable and responsible implementation across diverse production systems. By addressing these challenges, PLF offers a pathway towards more efficient, welfare-oriented, and environmentally sustainable livestock production, contributing to global food security and resilient agricultural systems. Full article

Consistent behavioural differences among individuals have been documented across many animal taxa, yet their developmental consequences in domestic production systems remain less clear. This gap is especially relevant in managed environments, where food availability and ecological constraints differ markedly from those in the wild. In this study, we assessed behavioural traits in 25 Tibetan sheep (Ovis aries) ewes and examined their associations with early growth in their lambs under semi-captive conditions on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. We quantified docility, exploration, vocal responses, and several physiological measures of responsiveness in the ewes and related these variables to lamb birth weight, early weight gain, and a composite growth index. We found that maternal docility had no significant effect on lamb birth weight, whereas maternal activity, defined as locomotor movement recorded during the open-field phase, was negatively associated with offspring birth weight. One possible interpretation is that ewes showing greater locomotor activity during the open-field phase allocate energy differently during gestation, which could limit foetal growth, although this mechanism was not directly tested in this study. These results suggest that the behavioural effects on offspring development depend strongly on the production context. In this semi-captive system, greater maternal responsiveness was not associated with improved offspring performance, unlike patterns that are often observed in wild populations. This context dependence may be relevant when behavioural traits are considered in Tibetan sheep management or breeding. Full article

(1) Background: SMART spinal implants combine biomechanical stabilization with embedded sensors for continuous in vivo monitoring of spinal loading and implant behaviour. This systematic review summarizes current SMART implant technologies in spinal surgery and evaluates their potential clinical applications. (2) Methods: A structured literature search was conducted in PubMed and Scopus in December 2025. Two independent reviewers screened studies using predefined criteria, with data extracted on implant design, sensor type, study model, and application; risk of bias was assessed using the Office of Health Assessment and Translation tool. (3) Results: Thirty-four studies met inclusion criteria, including sensor-integrated posterior rods and fixators (n = 16), vertebral body replacements (n = 6), intervertebral cages or disc space sensors (n = 7), and other configurations (n = 5). Devices were tested in human, cadaveric, and animal models. Most systems used strain-based sensors to quantify implant loading, while few employed accelerometers or pressure sensors. Reported results demonstrated activity- and posture-dependent load changes, and several studies indicated potential for monitoring spinal fusion progression by monitoring load trends. (4) Conclusions: Overall, SMART spinal implants primarily support biomechanical monitoring and show promise for real-time assessment of implant performance, though further studies correlating sensor data with clinical outcomes are required. Full article