Raoult C M C, Osthaus B, Hildebrand A C G, McElligott A G, Nawroth C
Animal Husbandry and Animal Ecology, Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences, Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle, Germany.
Centre for Proper Housing of Ruminants and Pigs, FSVO, Agroscope Tänikon, 8356 Ettenhausen, Switzerland.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Mar 3;8(3):201627. doi: 10.1098/rsos.201627.
The ability to adapt to changing environments is crucial for survival and has evolved based on socio-ecological factors. Goats and sheep are closely related, with similar social structures, body sizes and domestication levels, but different feeding ecologies, i.e. goats are browsers and sheep are grazers. We investigated whether goats' reliance on more patchily distributed food sources predicted an increased behavioural flexibility compared to sheep. We tested 21 goats and 28 sheep in a spatial A-not-B detour task. Subjects had to navigate around a straight barrier through a gap at its edge. After one, two, three or four of these initial A trials, the gap was moved to the opposite end and subjects performed four B trials. Behaviourally more flexible individuals should move through the new gap faster, while those less behaviourally flexible should show greater perseveration. While both species showed an accuracy reduction following the change of the gap position, goats recovered from this perseveration error from the second B trial onwards, whereas sheep did so only in the fourth B trial, indicating differences in behavioural flexibility between the species. This higher degree of flexibility in goats compared to sheep could be linked to differences in their foraging strategies.
适应不断变化的环境的能力对于生存至关重要，并且是基于社会生态因素而进化的。山羊和绵羊亲缘关系密切，具有相似的社会结构、体型和驯化水平，但觅食生态不同，即山羊是食叶动物而绵羊是食草动物。我们研究了与绵羊相比，山羊对分布更零散的食物来源的依赖是否预示着其行为灵活性的提高。我们在空间A非B迂回任务中测试了21只山羊和28只绵羊。实验对象必须绕过一个直的障碍物，从其边缘的一个缺口处通过。在最初的一、二、三或四次A实验后，缺口移到了另一端，实验对象进行四次B实验。行为上更灵活的个体应该更快地穿过新的缺口；而行为灵活性较差的个体则会表现出更强的固执性。虽然两个物种在缺口位置改变后准确率都有所下降，但山羊从第二次B实验开始就从这种固执性错误中恢复过来，而绵羊直到第四次B实验才恢复，这表明两个物种在行为灵活性上存在差异。与绵羊相比，山羊这种更高程度的灵活性可能与它们的觅食策略差异有关。
