The objective of this study was to determine whether piglets from different positions in the teat order differ inpersonality. Teat order is established within the first days after birth and from that time, piglets basically suckle fromthe same teat pair until weaning. Three piglets from each of 21 litters (n = 63) were chosen for their place in teatorder; one from anterior teats (A), one from middle teats (B), and one from rear teats (C). The piglets were observedduring suckling, undisturbed behaviour, a novel object test and a straw test. A total of 13 behaviours were registered.A significant difference (P < 0.05) between A, B and C piglets was found in the frequency of disputes duringsuckling, where B piglets were most involved in disputes and C piglets least involved, and a tendency (P < 0.1) wasfound in frequency of undisturbed playing and exploration. A piglets played and explored most, and C piglets least.Four interesting components were found with principal component analysis, explaining 62.4 % of the total variation.These represent personality traits tentatively named exploration, playfulness, food interest and straw interest. Therewere no significant differences in personality type between A, B and C piglets although a tendency that A pigletswere most playful and C piglets were least playful was found. Hence, this study suggests that there might be acorrelation between teat order position and personality.

Animals in zoos live in more barren environments than their conspecifics in nature. In nature, elephants spend more than 75 % of the day foraging and have been observed lying down two hours during night. Stereotypies are common in many different species in zoos. Stereotypic behaviors may constitute up to 50 % of the daily activity budget of zoo elephants. Modern zoos try to reduce stereotypic behaviors by means of environmental enrichment. Three elephant cows at Kolmårdens Djurpark were observed during night to map their nocturnal behaviors and see how they changed with feeding enrichment. The elephants were lying down on their sides 25 % of the time observed. With feeding enrichment offered in the morning, the stereotypies was reduced in one individual from 43 % to 13 % (P<0.01) and the foraging was increased in two individuals from 45 % to 80 % (P<0.01) and from 45 % to 64 % (P<0.05). Increased food access increased foraging behavior and as environmental enrichment was able to reduce the stereotypic behaviors in these Asian elephant.

Historically during domestication of animals, tameness towards humans was likely the most desired trait and therefore bred on. The red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) is the wild progenitor of all domestic chicken breeds and earlier studies present clear morphological, physiological and behavioural differences between domesticated breeds and the non-domesticated red junglefowl. These changes may be the result of altered gene expression - pleiotropy or linked genes. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate (1) effects of tameness selection on social behaviour towards conspecifics and (2) social behaviour differences between the sexes. Two generations of red junglefowl, P0 and its offspring F1, were studied. Both generations were divided into three selection lines (tame, intermediate or fearful), depending on their results in a fear of humans test.  A novel type of social reinstatement test was set up, containing a non-social area without stimulus, and a social area containing a mirror serving as stimulus animals. The social and aggressive behaviours performed towards the mirror were recorded, so was the time spent in the social versus non-social part. An undisturbed behaviour test was performed, as well as a standardized social reinstatement test. The P0-females performed significantly more social behaviour (p=0.008) at 26 weeks than males in the mirror test, and females also displayed significantly more social (p=0.04) and agonistic behaviour (p<0.001) than males in the undisturbed behaviour test. The social reinstatement test displayed a significant effect between the selection lines with regards to sociality. This suggests that there are immediate selection responses in early domestication.

Domestication is a process in which animals become adapted to a life among humans by means of selection. A reduced fear of humans is probably one of the first aims of selection, intentionally or unintentionally. Animals that have undergone the process of domestication have a different appearance than animals in the wild (domestic phenotype) and behave in a different way towards humans. In this study I have looked at foraging and explorative behaviours in an unselected parental generation of red junglefowl and their offspring. The parental generation were bred in three lines, a high line, with birds displaying a strong fear of humans, an intermediate line, birds showing a modest fear, and one low line, with birds performing a more tame behaviour towards humans. I presented the birds with three different feeding alternatives, familiar chicken food, meal worms camouflaged with wood shavings and just wood shavings. I counted number of pecks in the different food options, number of changes between sites and how many sites a bird visited. The results show that females of both generations were more explorative than males, by pecking more in cups of meal worms hidden in wood shavings whereas the males pecked more in cups containing chicken food. Females also moved around more in the arena. Results from the first selected generation show significant differences between the selection lines among the females, with females from the high and low groups being the most explorative.

In salmonids, the decision to migrate or remain resident is influenced by the status, and hence condition, of individuals. Status has been suggested to arise from the temperament of fish. In this study the links between standard metabolic rate and the levels of aggressiveness and shy/boldness were examined for 0+, hatchery-raised brown trout (Salmo trutta). I hypothesized, from the results of earlier studies (Cutts et al., 1998; Yamamoto et al., 1998), that high metabolic rates (MR) would be positively correlated to levels of aggression and boldness. The study was conducted in 200 L aquaria in which aggressiveness was measured by allowing each fish to interact with a mirror image of itself, and shy/boldness was tested by measuring the amount of time a fish used before exploring a new area. Standard metabolic rate was measured in a flow-through respirometer. In contrast to my expectations, there was no correlation between the different behavioural measures and the metabolic rate of fish. Also, no correlation between boldness and aggressiveness of fish was found. In additional testing aggressiveness correlated positively with the condition of fish (in coherence with Harwood et al., 2003) but, contrary to earlier studies (Överli et al., 2004; Schjolden & Winberg, 2007), not with the speed of acclimatization. The difference in results between this test and earlier studies, concerning the degree of correlation between MR and aggressiveness, suggests that the strength of this link differs between species of salmonids. Also, it may suggest changeability in the MR – behaviour link in different environments. Last, the status and condition of individuals cannot be unambiguously explained by temperament alone, but arise from a wider array of physiological and environmental factors.

Tidigare studier har visat att domesticerade höns påvisar en lägre nivå av rädsla jämfört med förfadern, de röda djungelhönsen. I denna studie testades 18 domesticerade White Leghorn (WL) och 18 röda djungelhöns (RJF). Målet med studien var att studera återhämtningen för de båda raserna vid en standardiserad stressupplevelse. Försöket gick ut på att hönsen vistades i enskilda burar och blev efter ett dygn utsatta av en akut stress. Därefter startades observationerna omedelbart för att se när hönsen återhämtade sig och återigen började visa naturliga beteenden. Utifrån alla hönsens resultat beräknades medelvärde och standardfel för varje ras och kön, som sedan jämfördes med variansanalys (repeated measures ANOVA). Beteenden som visade signifikanta resultat över tiden analyseras och visade i några fall tyda på en återhämtningsprocess. Överlag visade White Leghorn på en snabbare och effektivare återhämtning jämfört med de röda djungelhönsen. Resultatet tyder även på att honor har en snabbare återhämtning jämfört med hanar. Studien innehåller även ett didaktiskt moment då etologi studerades utifrån skolverkets föreskrifter om vad biologiundervisning ska innehålla för grundskolans senare år. Läroplanen och kursplaner studerades därefter och jämfördes med läroböcker.

Dogs are well adapted to a life close to humans and are capable of understanding several human social cues. Turn-taking is a fundamental phenomenon in human conversations, yet no research of turn-taking in interspecies vocal communication has been done. This pilot study therefore aimed to develop a test method in order to analyze if turn-taking occurs in interspecies vocal communication between dogs and humans and if turn-taking can be correlated with specific behaviors in dogs. By analyzing a vocal conversation between seven dogs and their owners during a request situation in their home environment, this study found support for turn-taking existence in dog-human vocal communications. In general, owner-dog vocal communication could be linked to positive events, such as tail wagging and eye contact. Meanwhile, a lower frequency of vocal turn- taking could be linked to stress related behaviors, such as lip licking. Owner in dyads where more vocal overlap occurred tended to score the owner-dog relationship and communication abilities with lower grades, suggesting the absence of turn-taking was experienced as unpleasant for the owner as well. In conclusion, findings from current study highlight the unique coevolution of dogs and humans and opens up for future research of turn-taking in interspecies vocal communication.

Separation anxiety is one of the most common behavioral disorder in companion dogs. Dogs not suffering from separation anxiety may still exhibit separation-related behaviors, which can differ depending on environmental contexts. In the present study, dogs without separation-related problems were video recorded during a short separation (3 min) from, and during reunion with, their owner. Comparison was done between if the dogs had played or been calm pre-separation. The dogs spent most time in proximity to the entrance and gazing towards where the owner left during separation. Their body-position was mostly standing, followed by sitting. All dogs were wining during separation, which occurred approximately four times more than barking. Dogs that had played pre-separation were running around more and had a longer latency to the first movement, compared to when they had been calm pre-separation. During reunion, when dogs had played pre-separation, they wagged their tail more and had a longer latency to lip licking, compared to when they had been calm pre-separation. The separation behaviors that occurred in this study aligns with previous work in this subject. Furthermore, one can suggest that play pre-separation might have an effect on separation behaviors, where speculations can be done if the positive affect associated with play might be the underlying cause for these findings.

The aim of this study was to investigate if the dog’s behaviour and the interactions between the dog and the owner   differ depending on lifestyle, breed or sex of the dog. For this we employed the Strange Situation Procedure, a test inspired from Mary Ainsworth´s study,   which investigated the attachment of human infants to their mothers. There were two breeds, Border collie and Shetland sheepdog and a total of 58 dogs that participated in this study. The two breeds were divided into two lifestyles, competition dogs and pet dogs. A PCA was used to find correlations between the behavioural variables and the factors were then analysed in a Mann Whitney U test to test the differences between breed, sex and lifestyle. In this study no differences in behaviour between the two lifestyles were shown. However, the results showed that there were some differences between the two breeds and between the two sexes in behavioural expressions. The differences between the breeds were quite expected because there are many different breeds today which are selected for various morphology and behavioural traits which could influence their behaviour. The difference in behaviour between the two sexes can be because of evolutionary heredity. Further studies on this subject should have bigger and more even sample size, longer separation time, a more balanced gender distribution of the owners and to also analyze the cortisol levels.

Cooperative behaviours among individuals play a crucial role in social interactions. There is a special interest in investigating the occurrence of cooperation among apes, because this knowledge could as well shed light on evolutionary processes and help understand the origin and development of cooperation in humans and primates in general. Gibbons are phylogenetically intermediate between the great apes and monkeys, and therefore represent a unique opportunity for comparisons. The aim of the present study was to discover whether or not gibbons (Hylobates lar) show cooperative behaviours among each other. In order to test for the respective behaviours, the gibbons were presented with a commonly used experimental cooperative problem-solving task. Additionally, social behaviours were recorded during behavioural observations. The gibbons in this study did not exhibit cooperative behaviours during the problemsolving task. Behavioural observations revealed that the gibbons spent significantly more time ‘out of arm’s reach to everyone’, suggesting that they are less involved in social interactions than other, more cooperative apes. Both findings combined support the “social brain hypothesis”, which predicts that cognitive abilities are constrained by the complexity of the animals’ social life. Based on previous findings of occurrences of cooperative behaviours in two other primate lineages (i.e. New World monkeys and Old World monkeys) it was suggested that cooperation in primates was a matter of a convergent evolutionary processes rather than a homologous trait.