Hausberger Martine, Fureix Carole, Bourjade Marie, Wessel-Robert Sabine, Richard-Yris Marie-Annick
Ethologie Animale et Humaine, Campus de Beaulieu bâtiment 25, Université Rennes, 263 avenue du Général Leclerc, Rennes Cedex, France.
Naturwissenschaften. 2012 Apr;99(4):291-302. doi: 10.1007/s00114-012-0902-8. Epub 2012 Mar 9.
Play remains a mystery and adult play even more so. More typical of young stages in healthy individuals, it occurs rarely at adult stages but then more often in captive/domestic animals, which can imply spatial, social and/or feeding deprivations or restrictions that are challenging to welfare, than in animals living in natural conditions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that adult play may reflect altered welfare states and chronic stress in horses, in which, as in several species, play rarely occurs at adult stages in natural conditions. We observed the behaviour (in particular, social play) of riding school horses during occasional outings in a paddock and measured several stress indicators when these horses were in their individual home boxes. Our results revealed that (1) the number of horses and rates of adult play appeared very high compared to field report data and (2) most stress indicators measured differed between 'players' and 'non-players', revealing that most 'playful' animals were suffering from more chronic stress than 'non-playful' horses. Frequency of play behaviour correlated with a score of chronic stress. This first discovery of a relationship between adult play and altered welfare opens new lines of research that certainly deserves comparative studies in a variety of species.
玩耍仍是一个谜，而成年动物的玩耍更是如此。玩耍在健康个体的幼年阶段更为常见，在成年阶段很少出现，但在圈养/家养动物中则更为频繁，这可能意味着空间、社交和/或食物方面的剥夺或限制，对福利构成挑战，而在自然环境中的动物则不然。在这里，我们检验了一个假设，即成年动物的玩耍可能反映了马匹福利状态的改变和慢性应激，与其他几个物种一样，在自然条件下，成年马匹很少玩耍。我们观察了骑术学校的马匹在偶尔进入围场时的行为（特别是社交玩耍），并在这些马匹回到各自的马厩时测量了几个应激指标。我们的结果显示：（1）与实地报告数据相比，马匹数量和成年动物玩耍的比例显得非常高；（2）所测量的大多数应激指标在“玩耍者”和“不玩耍者”之间存在差异，这表明大多数“爱玩耍”的动物比“不爱玩耍”的马匹承受着更多的慢性应激。玩耍行为的频率与慢性应激评分相关。成年动物玩耍与福利改变之间关系的这一首次发现开辟了新的研究方向，当然值得在各种物种中进行比较研究。
