Abstract
Affiliative behaviour may have an essential role in many behavioural processes. Gently
nosing between group members occurs in almost all social behavioural processes of pigs
(Sus scrofa), but the reasons for its performance are unclear. We examined whether nosing
between pigs was related to dominance relationships or harmful behaviours such as
manipulation of the tail using 80 crossbred pigs. Both males and females, housed in straw
pens, were studied at 8 weeks of age (10 pigs/pen). Dominance ranks were determined by
a feed competition test. The behaviour of 64 focal pigs was observed for 2 h per pig in total.
Pigs nosed their pen mates on average 36
±
3 times within 2 h, and nosing behaviour mainly
consisted of nose-to-nose contact, nosing the head and nosing the body, rather than nosing
the ear, groin, tail or ano-genital region. These gentle pig-directed nosing behaviours,
i.e. gently touching another individual with the snout, was here defined as social nosing.
Dominance relationships did not influence the amount of nosing given or received. Social
nosing was largely unrelated to harmful behaviour. Nosing the tail correlated with tail biting
(rs = 0.37), but only 0.3 percent of social nosing was followed by this behaviour. Pigs
which delivered much nosing did not receive less aggression, and nor did they receive a
heightened amount of nosing in return. We suggest that pigs may nose each other for social
recognition, as affiliative behaviour, to gain olfactory signals, or to satisfy an intrinsic need
to nose. In conclusion, social nosing in pigs was largely unrelated to harmful behaviours,
was not related to dominance relationships and should remain largely unaffected by efforts
to minimise harmful behaviours in farming systems.
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 84 - 91 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Applied Animal Behaviour Science |
Volume | 145 |
Issue number | 3-4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Print publication - May 2013 |
Bibliographical note
1023379Keywords
- Allogrooming
- Snout contact
- Tail biting