- Email: [email protected]
This week 50 years ago
A good home makes birds more optimistic HOW do you get inside an animal’s head and assess how it’s feeling? The short answer is, you can’t. But a study on starlings has taken us one step nearer by revealing how animals change their behaviour in response to different environmental conditions. The information could improve our understanding of animal welfare. Melissa Bateson and colleagues at Newcastle University, UK, investigated how starlings respond to different living conditions, by giving them choices designed to assess whether their outlook was “pessimistic” or “optimistic”. Birds were trained to associate a tasty snack – a worm – with a dish
with a white lid, and an unpalatable quinine-flavoured worm with a dish with a dark grey lid. Starlings soon learned not to bother flipping open dark grey lids. The birds were then kept either in “enriched” cages with branches and water baths, designed to promote greater welfare, or in standard cages that were smaller and bare. Next, the birds were given dishes with lids of various intermediate shades of grey. When there was ambiguity over the colour, and thus whether there was a tasty snack inside, only those birds kept in the enriched cages were likely to bother flipping open the lids. In other words, starlings in enriched cages
were more “optimistic”. The results will appear in Animal Welfare. In another experiment designed to test their feelings, starlings learned to discriminate between light signals that indicated either an instant or a delayed food reward, and act upon them accordingly. When the signals were ambiguous, those in standard cages were “pessimistic” in their response (Applied Animal Behaviour Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2007.03.07). Experiments by a team at the University of Bristol, UK, have shown similar results in rats. “If you have information coming in that the environment is a bad place, then it makes sense to make adaptive changes to the way you
“To improve animal welfare, it’s important to look as deeply as possible at the levels at which we are similar to animals”
THIS WEEK 50 YEARS AGO Fantastic plastic Polypropylene articles, tubing and film were all on show at the international trade fair just held in Milan. Since it was first rumoured that Italian company Montecatini had succeeded in polymerising propylene, there has been keen interest in this possible new rival to polyethylene. Two major difficulties hampered the development of the process – the instability of the polymer under oxidising conditions and a tendency for it to crystallise on ageing. These problems, it seems, have been largely overcome by the use of antioxidants and surface-active agents respectively, allowing polypropylene to have a much longer lifespan. This is very important if it is to challenge polyethylene in its use as a plastic. Polypropylene is said to be an excellent insulating medium, having superior stretch and stress qualities, and it can be heated up to about 160 °C. This resistance to high temperature means that polypropylene products can be heat-sterilised –
www.newscientist.com
070428_N_p14_p15.indd 15
clearly an advantage in many applications. Moulding, extrusion and blowing techniques can also be applied to this form of plastic and the makers have high hopes that, in the film form, it will prove an important substitute for cellulose film. The Italian company has recently started production of polypropylene on a limited industrial scale. The initial output from this process has been used mainly for experimental purposes – samples were made available to interested manufacturers and were put on display in Milan – and to gauge the consumer’s attitude to the new material. Full commercial operation of the process, which appears to be similar to that evolved by German company Ziegler for the production of polyethylene, is imminent. However, Montecatini is very keen to point out that producing polypropylene is expected to be significantly cheaper than polyethylene. From The New Scientist, 28 April 1957
process information,” says Bateson. This is why our reaction times tend to go down when we are anxious, or we are more likely to interpret an ambiguous shadow as a spider. Until now, farmers have had to wait for obvious signs – such as sores on chickens’ legs – before they could tell that there was a problem. “We’re not getting into animals’ subjective experience, but it’s important to look as deeply as possible at the levels at which we are similar to animals,” says Bateson. “We can’t improve animal welfare unless we have ways of assessing their emotional states.” Veterinary scientist John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol says that switches from optimism to pessimism in humans can be associated with the onset of depression. “It is possible that the same changes in non-human animals are also associated with mood changes.” Rowan Hooper ●
Engineered zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) for the regulation of gene expression Croonian Prize Lecture Thursday 3 May at 6.30pm
Admission free – no tickets or advance booking required. Royal Society events are frequently broadcast live on the web. Visit the video archive at www.royalsoc.ac.uk/live
The Royal Society 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG Tel: 020 7451 2683 / 2518 Email: [email protected]
Sir Aaron Klug OM FRS MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge In this lecture, Nobel Prize winner Sir Aaron Klug will discuss recent developments including trials using VEGF-activating ZFPs to treat human peripheral arterial disease by stimulating vascular growth. Other examples of therapeutic development programs are those on neuropathic pain, macular degeneration and producing permanently modified uninfectable T-cells to combat both HIV and opportunistic infections.
Registered Charity No 207043
28 April 2007 | NewScientist | 15
24/4/07 11:25:48 am
with a white lid, and an unpalatable quinine-flavoured worm with a dish with a dark grey lid. Starlings soon learned not to bother flipping open dark grey lids. The birds were then kept either in “enriched” cages with branches and water baths, designed to promote greater welfare, or in standard cages that were smaller and bare. Next, the birds were given dishes with lids of various intermediate shades of grey. When there was ambiguity over the colour, and thus whether there was a tasty snack inside, only those birds kept in the enriched cages were likely to bother flipping open the lids. In other words, starlings in enriched cages
were more “optimistic”. The results will appear in Animal Welfare. In another experiment designed to test their feelings, starlings learned to discriminate between light signals that indicated either an instant or a delayed food reward, and act upon them accordingly. When the signals were ambiguous, those in standard cages were “pessimistic” in their response (Applied Animal Behaviour Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2007.03.07). Experiments by a team at the University of Bristol, UK, have shown similar results in rats. “If you have information coming in that the environment is a bad place, then it makes sense to make adaptive changes to the way you
“To improve animal welfare, it’s important to look as deeply as possible at the levels at which we are similar to animals”
THIS WEEK 50 YEARS AGO Fantastic plastic Polypropylene articles, tubing and film were all on show at the international trade fair just held in Milan. Since it was first rumoured that Italian company Montecatini had succeeded in polymerising propylene, there has been keen interest in this possible new rival to polyethylene. Two major difficulties hampered the development of the process – the instability of the polymer under oxidising conditions and a tendency for it to crystallise on ageing. These problems, it seems, have been largely overcome by the use of antioxidants and surface-active agents respectively, allowing polypropylene to have a much longer lifespan. This is very important if it is to challenge polyethylene in its use as a plastic. Polypropylene is said to be an excellent insulating medium, having superior stretch and stress qualities, and it can be heated up to about 160 °C. This resistance to high temperature means that polypropylene products can be heat-sterilised –
www.newscientist.com
070428_N_p14_p15.indd 15
clearly an advantage in many applications. Moulding, extrusion and blowing techniques can also be applied to this form of plastic and the makers have high hopes that, in the film form, it will prove an important substitute for cellulose film. The Italian company has recently started production of polypropylene on a limited industrial scale. The initial output from this process has been used mainly for experimental purposes – samples were made available to interested manufacturers and were put on display in Milan – and to gauge the consumer’s attitude to the new material. Full commercial operation of the process, which appears to be similar to that evolved by German company Ziegler for the production of polyethylene, is imminent. However, Montecatini is very keen to point out that producing polypropylene is expected to be significantly cheaper than polyethylene. From The New Scientist, 28 April 1957
process information,” says Bateson. This is why our reaction times tend to go down when we are anxious, or we are more likely to interpret an ambiguous shadow as a spider. Until now, farmers have had to wait for obvious signs – such as sores on chickens’ legs – before they could tell that there was a problem. “We’re not getting into animals’ subjective experience, but it’s important to look as deeply as possible at the levels at which we are similar to animals,” says Bateson. “We can’t improve animal welfare unless we have ways of assessing their emotional states.” Veterinary scientist John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol says that switches from optimism to pessimism in humans can be associated with the onset of depression. “It is possible that the same changes in non-human animals are also associated with mood changes.” Rowan Hooper ●
Engineered zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) for the regulation of gene expression Croonian Prize Lecture Thursday 3 May at 6.30pm
Admission free – no tickets or advance booking required. Royal Society events are frequently broadcast live on the web. Visit the video archive at www.royalsoc.ac.uk/live
The Royal Society 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG Tel: 020 7451 2683 / 2518 Email: [email protected]
Sir Aaron Klug OM FRS MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge In this lecture, Nobel Prize winner Sir Aaron Klug will discuss recent developments including trials using VEGF-activating ZFPs to treat human peripheral arterial disease by stimulating vascular growth. Other examples of therapeutic development programs are those on neuropathic pain, macular degeneration and producing permanently modified uninfectable T-cells to combat both HIV and opportunistic infections.
Registered Charity No 207043
28 April 2007 | NewScientist | 15
24/4/07 11:25:48 am