A continuous recording approach to qualitative behaviour assessment in dairy buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis)

tIn order to develop a method suitable for a continuous qualitative evaluation of ani-mal behaviour while it changes during the observation period, two recently describedtechniques, the Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) and the Temporal DominantBehavioural Expression (TDBE), derived by the Temporal Dominance of Sensations, wereused in combination and applied to 8 Mediterranean buffalo heifers. Animals were sub-jected to two isolation tests lasting 150 s each. One consisted in isolating individual animalsfrom the rest of the group in the indoor part of the home pen, the other in leading ani-mals individually to an outdoor paddock, which was novel to the animals. The behaviourof the animals was video-recorded and the resulting 16 video clips were assessed by atwelve-member trained panel with previous experience in animal behaviour observation.The TDBE allowed the QBA to be performed continuously (C-QBA) during the observationperiod on a pre-determined list of six behavioural descriptors. Data were subjected to anal-ysis of variance using observer (n = 12), replication (n = 4), animal (n = 16) and the first orderinteractions as factors. Changes of behavioural expressions during the test were assessedby dividing it into three intervals of 50 s and using the 2one-sample test to check thedominance of each descriptor in each interval. The Wilcoxon test was used to comparequantitative and qualitative behavioural variables as assessed indoors and outdoors. Thelow level of variance explained for each descriptor by the interactions animal × replicationand animal × assessor as compared with the animal (the F of the factor animal was roughly10 times higher than that of the interactions), showed the intra- and inter-observer reli-ability of the panel. Indoors, the dominant descriptors of buffalo behaviour (calm, apatheticand curious) were all indicative of a low level of arousal and frequently switched from oneanother. Outdoors, most of the animals were described with terms indicating a high levelof arousal (e.g. Active and Nervous) and only at the end of the test they were generallyscored as Curious. Accordingly, the dominance of the descriptor Curious changed duringthe test when the animals were tested outdoors (2= 7.00, P < 0.05), whereas no significantchanges were observed for all the other descriptors both indoors and outdoors (P > 0.05).The results indicate that C-QBA, if combined with the appropriate tools (i.e. TDBE), may beable to follow and describe the variations of animal behavioural expressions in time.