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Are 6-month-old foals sensitive to dam's influence?

S Henry1, S Briefer, M-A Richard-Yris

  • 1UMR CNRS 6552 Ethologie-Evolution-Ecologie, Université de Rennes 1, Avenue du Général Leclerc, Campus de Beaulieu, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France. severine.henry@univ-rennes1.fr

Developmental Psychobiology
|June 20, 2007
PubMed

A recent study has shown that gently handling dams in front of their few days old foals may strongly influence the development of human-foal relationships. In the present study, we test whether 6-month-old foals remain sensitive to their dams' influence. The study was performed on 16 foal-mare dyads, with half of the mares receiving positive contacts from the experimenter in presence of their 6-month-old foals (n = 8) whereas the other mares were not handled (n = 8). All foals were tested 15 and 30-35 days later under various conditions (reaction to a motionless human, approach test, saddle-pad tolerance test). We observe a positive effect of mare' handling on foals' reactions to humans but with a high interindividual variability, suggesting a higher effect of the foals' own behavioral characteristics at this age than at earlier stages.

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