McMillan (2016) suggested that social animals that form strong relationships and are integrated most strongly into group living are most likely to survive, reproduce, and raise offspring to...
An understanding of the natural lifestyle of rabbits makes it easy to see why the traditional way of keeping rabbits impacts on their welfare. What an owner considers to be a behaviour problem may...
Mariti et al (2017) discovered that dogs which were uncomfortable with their owners carrying out procedures at home would also be intolerant of the veterinary nurse or surgeon doing the same in the...
Having evolved as a territorial species that predated on rodents, but that was also predated on by larger carnivores (Bradshaw et al, 2012), the cat is effectively, constantly, asking itself ‘Am I...
It is not the intention of this article to explain the ethology of the dog, but some good books are available (Horwitz and Mills, 2009; Hedges, 2014), and these will assist staff in developing an...
Annually, more pets are euthanased, abandoned or rehomed for behavioural reasons than as a result of medical problems (Overall, 2013); and the majority of these animals are under 3 years of age. This...
Gene selection has long been exploited by breeders to produce particular physical (e.g. bracychephalic breeds) and behavioural (e.g. herding breeds) phenotypes. However, there is growing awareness...
During the second half of the 20th and early part of the 21st century, the prevailing theory regarding the social behaviour of the domestic dog was that, when living in groups, canine social...
When a dog displays a behaviour — no matter how inconvenient for us — it is responding to environmental triggers and basing its behavioural decision on genetic/innate influences and the environmental...
Pet ownership is known to have a number of positive impacts on the health and wellbeing of owners. According to a 2005 paper written for the British Medical Journal (McNicholas et al, 2005), benefits...