HEALTH/WELFARE
UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOUR
Victoria Barrett, from Simply Alpaca, outlines how applied behaviour science offers a better understanding of alpaca behaviour and explains how Camelidynamics can help you to handle your animals without using force.
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resenting a BAS webinar Victoria said that when she first learnt about applied behaviour science “it required a fundamental shift in the way I thought when I interacted with them”.
“To really change our animals’ behaviour first we have got to change our own, and in Camelidynamics we are looking for a commitment to facilitate rather than force behaviour to change the quality of our relationships with our animals,” she explained. The definition of behaviour is “the way a person or animal behaves in response to a certain stimulus or situation”. Research in the 1800s resulted in a set of laws and one, ‘The Law of Effect’ finds that “in any given situation, the likelihood of a behaviour occurring is related to the consequences that behaviour has produced in the past”. Behaviour is therefore a tool used to produce consequences – for example alpacas may act in an affectionate manner for food. And, in behaviour science, a consequence is defined as “the event that strengthens the behaviour that it immediately follows”. “When the consequences of a behaviour results in something of value such as food, freedom or females for example then that behaviour will be repeated and strengthened,” Victoria said. “When the consequence is adversive – being grabbed or being caught, being injected, or having toenails clipped, or many of the other things that we do – then that behaviour is less likely to be repeated.” Feedback that influences behaviour comes from the environment including inaminate objects, other animals and people or handlers; it then follows that learning can be described as behaviour change due to experience. “This 72 Alpaca #90 YEARBOOK
means when it comes to the way our animals behave around us, or for us, understanding how our animals experience us and our behaviour couldn’t be more important,” Victoria said. Victoria is often asked about alpaca and llama behaviour by owners who may give their animals labels such as dominant, sad, aggressive or stubborn “or anything else to describe what they think is going on”. However, a working definition of behaviour is not what an animal is or has, but rather what it does that can be measured, or observed given certain conditions, Victoria explained. “The problem with labels is that we think we understand the problem when we have just given it a name. Labels also create self-fulfilling prophesies often causing the owner to get what they expect.” Refusal to walk on a halter and lead rope is an example. “Steady pressure is applied to the lead by the handler and the animal applies equal and opposite force. The animal is labelled stubborn and the owner pulls more so the animal pulls back more and no one is going anywhere.” Labels describe an animal rather than what they do, Victoria said. More importantly they absolve human handlers of any responsibility as they decide it is the animals’ fault. “We can’t teach animals what to be, they will be who they are, but we can teach them what to do and when to do it. So, when we focus on behaviour, we are really looking at changing the way we think about it and describing accurately what we see.” Describing what we see, rather than labelling, is known as operationalisation and offers the potential to prevent and change problematic behaviour. For example, rather than saying my alpaca is happy we can say that it is quiet, grazing and ruminating; or rather than my
