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Animals
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Interrelationships between Animal Behaviors and Control of Diseases
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Interrelationships between Animal Behaviors and Control of Diseases

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Veterinary Clinical Studies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2024 | Viewed by 2918

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Benjamin Hart

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Guest Editor
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, DVM, PhD, DACVB, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, 1089 Health Sciences Drive, Davis, CA, USA
Interests: animal behavior; behavioral adaptions; animal physiology; behavioral neuroscience; veterinary science
Prof. Dr. Lynette A. Hart

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
MA, PhD, Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, 1089 Health Sciences Drive, Davis, CA, USA
Interests: animal behavior and welfare; human-animal interactions; anthrozoology; assistance dogs

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Animals living in nature are constantly exposed to pathogens and parasites. In contrast to modern medicine, animals in nature (and ancient humans) do not experience immunizing vaccinations, antibiotics when infected with pathogens, or nursing care when sick. Yet they seem to survive and can even thrive in terms of wellness. Many reports of animals living in nature show their behaviors counteracting infections by pathogens or parasites. These will be addressed in this Special Issue and will reveal a complex array of behavioral strategies that prevent or reduce disease: physical avoidance of conspecifics infected with a pathogen; peripheralization of strange conspecifics; the cannibalism taboo to avoid pathogens of recently dead conspecifics; potentiation of the immune system; removal of pathogens by herbal medicine; activation of fever and sickness behaviors in infected individuals; and nursing care of sick conspecifics. While in animals these strategies are species-specific, humans employ all these strategies, as appropriate to the circumstances. An unexplored area is the prevalence of acquired resistance to antibiotics in humans, compared with animals’ lack of acquired resistance in herbal medicine, raising the question of what could be learned from animals’ herbal medicine use.

Prof. Dr. Benjamin Hart
Prof. Dr. Lynette A. Hart
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • animals behavioral strategies
  • behavioral adaptions
  • control of diseases
  • nursing care of sick conspecifics
  • survival and wellness
  • potentiation of the immune system
  • pathogens and parasites

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Review

18 pages, 33683 KiB  
Review
Programmed Grooming after 30 Years of Study: A Review of Evidence and Future Prospects
by Michael S. Mooring
Animals 2024, 14(9), 1266; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ani14091266 - 23 Apr 2024
Viewed by 361
Abstract
In 1992, an evolutionary model for the endogenous regulation of parasite-defense grooming was first proposed for African antelope by Ben and Lynette Hart. Known as the programmed grooming model, it hypothesized that a central control mechanism periodically evokes grooming so as to remove [...] Read more.
In 1992, an evolutionary model for the endogenous regulation of parasite-defense grooming was first proposed for African antelope by Ben and Lynette Hart. Known as the programmed grooming model, it hypothesized that a central control mechanism periodically evokes grooming so as to remove ectoparasites before they blood feed. The programmed grooming model contrasts with a stimulus-driven mechanism, in which grooming is stimulated by direct peripheral irritation from ectoparasite bites. In the 30+ years since the seminal 1992 paper, 26 studies have provided robust support for the programmed grooming model in ungulate hosts and ticks. In addition, multiple studies from unaffiliated investigators have evaluated the predictions of the model in different host systems (including rodents and primates) and in a variety of other ectoparasites (fleas, lice, and keds). I conducted a tricennial review of these studies to assess the current evidence and arrived at the following three conclusions: (1) tests of the programmed grooming predictions should use a similar methodology to the well-established protocol, so that the results are comparable and can be properly assessed; (2) the predictions used to test the model should be tailored to the biology of the host taxa under investigation; and (3) the predictions should likewise be tailored to the biology of the ectoparasites involved, bearing in mind that grooming has varying degrees of effectiveness, depending on the parasite. Further research is warranted to enhance our understanding of the role of grooming in maintaining the health of wild animals in the face of parasite attacks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Interrelationships between Animal Behaviors and Control of Diseases)
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22 pages, 1171 KiB  
Review
Neurobiology of Pathogen Avoidance and Mate Choice: Current and Future Directions
by Dante Cantini, Elena Choleris and Martin Kavaliers
Animals 2024, 14(2), 296; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ani14020296 - 17 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1137
Abstract
Animals are under constant threat of parasitic infection. This has influenced the evolution of social behaviour and has strong implications for sexual selection and mate choice. Animals assess the infection status of conspecifics based on various sensory cues, with odours/chemical signals and the [...] Read more.
Animals are under constant threat of parasitic infection. This has influenced the evolution of social behaviour and has strong implications for sexual selection and mate choice. Animals assess the infection status of conspecifics based on various sensory cues, with odours/chemical signals and the olfactory system playing a particularly important role. The detection of chemical cues and subsequent processing of the infection threat that they pose facilitates the expression of disgust, fear, anxiety, and adaptive avoidance behaviours. In this selective review, drawing primarily from rodent studies, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the detection and assessment of infection status and their relations to mate choice are briefly considered. Firstly, we offer a brief overview of the aspects of mate choice that are relevant to pathogen avoidance. Then, we specifically focus on the olfactory detection of and responses to conspecific cues of parasitic infection, followed by a brief overview of the neurobiological systems underlying the elicitation of disgust and the expression of avoidance of the pathogen threat. Throughout, we focus on current findings and provide suggestions for future directions and research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Interrelationships between Animal Behaviors and Control of Diseases)
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16 pages, 795 KiB  
Review
Evaluating the Presence of Disgust in Animals
by Trevor I. Case and Richard J. Stevenson
Animals 2024, 14(2), 264; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ani14020264 - 15 Jan 2024
Viewed by 942
Abstract
The emotion of disgust in humans is widely considered to represent a continuation of the disease-avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals. The extent to which analogs of human disgust are evident in nonhuman animals, however, remains unclear. The scant research explicitly investigating disgust in [...] Read more.
The emotion of disgust in humans is widely considered to represent a continuation of the disease-avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals. The extent to which analogs of human disgust are evident in nonhuman animals, however, remains unclear. The scant research explicitly investigating disgust in animals has predominantly focused on great apes and suggests that disgust might be present in a highly muted form. In this review, we outline the main approaches to disgust. We then briefly discuss disease-avoidance behavior in nonhuman animals, proposing a set of criteria against which evidence for the presence or absence of disgust in animals can be evaluated. The resultant decision tree takes into account other plausible causes of avoidance and aversion when evaluating whether it is likely that the behavior represents disgust. We apply this decision tree to evaluate evidence of disgust-like behavior (e.g., avoidance of carrion and avoidance of feces-contaminated food) in several examples, including nonhuman great apes. Finally, we consider the large disparity between disgust in humans compared to muted disgust in other great apes, examining the possibility that heightened disgust in humans is a relatively recent cultural acquisition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Interrelationships between Animal Behaviors and Control of Diseases)
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