BERG March 2019

berg@lists.stir.ac.uk

4 participants
9 discussions

by Guillermo Hidalgo Gadea

For: berg Mailing List Read Lists Message <http://lists.stir.ac.uk.readweb-tnn.live/msgviewer?id=5c9e4f8b40529f0001da0…> 13:02:03 Re: [BERG] No BERG: Mid-semester break! Take action before Saturday ________________________________ The University is ranked in the QS World Rankings of the top 5% of universities in the world (QS World University Rankings, 2016/17) The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.

5 years, 8 months

Seminar 4th April, 4pm University of Stirling

by Hannah Buchanan-Smith

Dear all Dr. Mandy Paterson, Principal Scientist at RSPCA Queensland, Australia will give a talk entitled "Adoption success, behaviour assessment and other research at RSPCA Queensland" (abstract below) Thursday 4th April, 3A94, Cottrell Building , University of Stirling. External visitors please see: https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/getting-here/ Note you need to pay for parking between 9am-5pm. If anyone would like to join us for dinner after Mandy's talk please let me know by Tuesday 2nd April so I may book a table (h.m.buchanan-smith(a)stir.ac.uk) Please feel free to share amongst colleagues/other potentially interested parties. "Adoption success, behaviour assessment and other research at RSPCA Queensland" Abstract RSPCA Qld rehomes over 6,000 dogs and 10,000 cats a year as well as approximately 2,000 other species (birds, livestock, rodents and reptiles). We aim to achieve a successful match between adopted pet and new owner but this, unfortunately is not always the case. Animals brought back within 14 days are named 'returns', are accepted back and the owner receives a refund. Pets brought back after 14 days, in most cases, are treated the same as any other 'surrender' and are not tagged as a 'return' in our database (although the animal will have the same identification number). The 'return rate' for RSPCA Qld is around 3% but the true number of animals that comes back to us (returns and surrenders) has not been examined. When an animal is returned or surrendered a reason for this is recorded. However, whether the reasons given paint an accurate picture is not known. Initial analysis reveals that between 4% (kittens) and 13% (adult dogs) are brought back to the shelter and 70% of these are in the first 14 days. A better understanding of the animals coming back - how long they are staying in the new home, and why they are being brought back - will allow us to improve our adoption processes, animal preparation for adoption and support given for animals after adoption. In shelters around the world, dogs' behaviour is assessed prior to adoption to gauge suitability for adoption, ensure public safety (aggressive dogs are not allowed into the community), and instigate behaviour modification programs where necessary. However, the validity and predictability of such assessments is currently under fire with some shelters even stopping assessments altogether. RSPCA Qld believes there is value in canine behaviour assessment and we have conducted several studies with the aim to improve overall assessment processes and gauge just how predicative our testing is. We found the following post-adoption behaviours were significantly correlated with shelter behaviour assessment: friendliness and social behaviour including interactions with children, strangers and known and unknown dogs and cats; anxiousness; and fear. When asked about their adopted dog's behaviour around food, 91% of new owners were not concerned, and when asked about their dog when it had been left alone, 80% were not concerned about its behaviour. Hannah M. Buchanan-Smith Professor, Behaviour and Evolution Research Group<https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties-and-services/natural-sciences/our-re…> Stirling Human Animal Interaction Research (SHAIR<https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties-and-services/natural-sciences/our-re…>) Group Room 3A79, Cottrell Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland Tel: 01786 467674 Fax: 01786 467641 E-mail: h.m.buchanan-smith(a)stir.ac.uk<mailto:h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk> Home page: https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/257464 http://marmosetcare.com/ http://www.247animalwelfare.eu/ http://refiningdogcare.com/

5 years, 9 months

BERG Meeting - Wednesday 27th March 2019

by Deborah Bruce

Dear BERGers, This week at BERG our speaker is Guillermo Hidalgo Gadea who will be talking about his MSc Project in Evolutionary Psychology titled, "Spontaneous numerical cognition in human and non-human primates". Guillermo plans to focus his talk on the combination of discrete and continuous magnitude features in a quantity discrimination task. Along with very preliminary results for human and chimpanzee performance, there will be a short outlook on further data analysis and lots of fun videos. Abstract: "Much work has been conducted in human and non-human animals' performance in relative quantity discrimination (Agrillo & Bisaza, 2014; Gallistel & Gelman, 2000), and results indicate that human and non-human animals may share a magnitude scale, i.e. the approximate number system (ANS; Cantlon, Platt & Brannon, 2009). Discrimination performance has been shown to be subject to Weber's law, resulting in lower performance discriminating between similar quantities, and lower performance discriminating between large quantities, thus varying as a function of the ratio between the smaller and the larger quantity (Beran & Parrish, 2016). Nevertheless, little is known about how accurate primates mentally represent and combine different magnitude features, e.g. continuous (size) and discrete (numerosity) magnitudes, to discriminate total quantities. This research aims to explore quantity representation and feature preferences in different primate species, analysing limits of spontaneous quantity discrimination in competing magnitude features. " [cid:ce5525cf-f3aa-403e-9405-d749af5b5c73] Our meeting is at the usual time and venue: 5.30 p.m. in the Common Room (3A94), with the usual drinks and nibbles. If you have students who might wish to be on the BERG mailing list, please send them this e-mail. To sign up to the BERG mailing list please use the following link: http://lists.stir.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/berg (You can also use this link to unsubscribe) An up to date copy of our schedule can be found at: https://stir.app.box.com/s/rwzik2tsai3kausdtekqvgayv34otmgt See you all on Wednesday. Best Wishes, Deborah

5 years, 9 months

BERG Meeting - Wednesday 20th March 2019

by Deborah Bruce

Dear BERGers, This is an earlier than usual mailing so that you all have plenty time to do your homework for next week's BERG meeting. Instead of a talk, our very own Jade Hooper will be leading a reading group session around the question: When is a bite a bite, and why does this matter? For this session we will be discussing the attached paper by Oxley et al (2019). This short paper is on the topic of dog bites and how these are defined. Please read the paper prior to the meeting so we can discuss some of the issues raised within. Topics of discussion will be led by the interests of the group, but may focus on issues such as - When is a bite a bite and why might this matter? What are the implications of this for research methodologies and outcomes? What does this mean for victims and their families, and how might the physical and psychological implications differ? What can we do about this as researchers and practitioners? [cid:62928cb0-54a8-41e2-9cf9-e712bd021f9a] Paper - Oxley, J. A., Christley, R., & Westgarth, C. (2019). What is a dog bite? Perceptions of UK dog bite victims. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 29, 40-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2018.09.002 Jade has provided a couple of items (attached to this email hopefully), for you to get your teeth into before the meeting - sincere apologies for that very bad pun! Our meeting will be at the usual time of 5.30 p.m. in the Common Room (3A94). To sign up to the BERG mailing list please use the following link: http://lists.stir.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/berg (You can also use this link to unsubscribe) An up to date copy of our schedule can be found at: https://stir.app.box.com/s/rwzik2tsai3kausdtekqvgayv34otmgt See you all on Wednesday. Best Wishes, Deborah

5 years, 9 months

BERG Meeting 13th March

by Deborah Bruce

Dear BERGers, This week at BERG our speaker is Gemma Mackintosh who will be giving the following talk: "Sending clues for success: The role of intentional communication in facilitating cumulative cultural evolution". Our meeting is at the usual time and venue: 5.30 p.m. in the Common Room (3A94), with customary drinks and nibbles. If you have students who might wish to be on the BERG mailing list, please send them this e-mail. To sign up to the BERG mailing list please use the following link: http://lists.stir.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/berg (You can also use this link to unsubscribe) An up to date copy of our schedule can be found at: https://stir.app.box.com/s/rwzik2tsai3kausdtekqvgayv34otmgt See you all on Wednesday. Best Wishes, Deborah

5 years, 9 months

BERG Spring Schedule 2019

by Deborah Bruce

Dear BERGers, Sorry to clutter your inbox, but a few people have been unable to access the Spring Schedule on BOX. Apologies to anyone who has had issues. This link appears to be the correct one: https://stir.app.box.com/s/rwzik2tsai3kausdtekqvgayv34otmgt Best, Deborah

5 years, 9 months

BERG Meeting - Wednesday 6th March 2019

by Deborah Bruce

Dear BERGers, This week at BERG our speaker is Sharon Kessler who will be giving the following talk: Mouse lemurs to phylogenetic trees: Towards a comparative understanding of vocal signatures Outline: Much research has been done on how vocalizations may convey information about the caller, including individual identity and kin group affiliations. This talk covers some of my previous work on mouse lemur vocal signatures and how that led me to begin asking questions about how vocal signatures evolve across clades. [cid:1cd89ce1-9ef1-4820-af6a-b057e99d7814] Our meeting is at the usual time and venue: 5.30 p.m. in the Common Room (3A94), with drinks and nibbles as always. If you have students who might wish to be on the BERG mailing list, please send them this e-mail. To sign up to the BERG mailing list please use the following link: http://lists.stir.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/berg (You can also use this link to unsubscribe) An up to date copy of our schedule can be found at: https://stir.app.box.com/file/379199974874 See you all on Wednesday. Best Wishes, Deborah

5 years, 9 months

Children, Adolescents & Animals Research (caar) events in 2019

by Hannah Buchanan-Smith

These two free workshops, and one at £10 may be of interest to some. Enjoy the weekend! Hannah From: MULDOON Janine <janine.muldoon(a)ed.ac.uk> Sent: 01 March 2019 14:19 To: MULDOON Janine <janine.muldoon(a)ed.ac.uk> Subject: Children, Adolescents & Animals Research (caar) events in 2019 Good afternoon! I am contacting you as you have either attended one of our previous events in 2017/2018, or have registered interest in attending future events. Some of you may already have noticed (from our website or social media channels) that we are running three more events this year - two more of our reflective workshops for practitioners (in April and May), continuing a successful series we ran last year that was funded by ESRC. Following on from last year's co-hosted conference with the Scottish SPCA, we will be organising another this year (in September), focusing on the links between animal cruelty, adverse life experiences, and human violence. I am managing the bookings for the workshops (via Bookitbee), while the Scottish SPCA is managing bookings for the conference (via Eventbrite). To secure a place, click on the links below. Please do share the links with others you know who may be interested. Workshop 1 [https://liveit-media.imgix.net/media/event/childrens-relationships-with-dif…]<https://event.bookitbee.com/21366/childrens-relationships-with-different-ty…> Children's relationships with different types of companion animal<https://event.bookitbee.com/21366/childrens-relationships-with-different-ty…> event.bookitbee.com A reflective workshop on children and their pets (caar) (Friday, April 26th 2019) Workshop 2 [https://liveit-media.imgix.net/media/event/new-advances-in-animal-cruelty-p…]<https://event.bookitbee.com/21367/new-advances-in-animal-cruelty-prevention> New advances in animal cruelty prevention<https://event.bookitbee.com/21367/new-advances-in-animal-cruelty-prevention> event.bookitbee.com A reflective workshop on animal cruelty prevention (caar) (Friday, May 31st 2019) Conference with the Scottish SPCA [https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/styles/panel_breakpoints_theme_uoe_mobile_1x/pub…]<https://www.ed.ac.uk/health/news/conference-against-animal-cruelty> Specialist conference in the fight against animal cruelty<https://www.ed.ac.uk/health/news/conference-against-animal-cruelty> www.ed.ac.uk<http://www.ed.ac.uk> Together with the University of Edinburgh, the Scottish SPCA recently announced a new conference for 2019 on recognising non-accidental injury in animals Jo and I look forward to seeing you, and if you have any questions about the events or other aspects of our work, please do get in touch. Please also advise us if you would prefer to be removed from our mailing list. Many thanks and best wishes, Janine Dr Janine Muldoon Research Fellow Caar (Children, adolescents and animals research) Clinical & Health Psychology University of Edinburgh Doorway 6 Medical School Teviot Place Edinburgh EH8 9AG Caar website<https://www.ed.ac.uk/health/research/cadp/child-animal-research> Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/ChildAnimalResearch/> Twitter<https://twitter.com/childanimals> [cid:260a5ec7-6b47-43a5-91a1-e0bb49c143d7] [1509726226882_Edinburgh] The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

5 years, 9 months

Next week seminar on Thursday

by Phyllis Lee

Dear all, In addition to next week's BERG meeting, the divisional seminar at 4pm on Thursday might be of special interest. It's Martyn Murray (wildlife biologist) talking on perceptions of nature over human evolutionary history.... All welcome. Please let anyone else interested know. Best wishes Phyllis P.C.Lee Professor, Psychology Behaviour and Evolution Research Group Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling mobile +44 7802427133

5 years, 9 months

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BERG March 2019