Are Underweight Shelter Dogs More Likely to Display Food Aggression toward Humans?

It is commonly believed that underweight or emaciated dogs are predisposed to food aggression toward humans. Each year, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) receives hundreds of dogs from criminal cruelty cases. The dogs range from emaciated to overweight.

Psittacine cognition: Individual differences and sources of variation.

Both the number and breadth of avian cognition studies have expanded in the past three decades. Parrots have a long history as subjects in avian cognition research. This paper summarizes results from a number of parrot species tested on basic learning, and physical & social cognitive processes, with an emphasis on individual differences.

The Relationship between Personality Dimensions and Resiliency to Environmental Stress in Orange-Winged Amazon Parrots (Amazona amazonica), as Indicated by the Development of Abnormal Behaviors.

Parrots are popular companion animals, but are frequently relinquished because of behavioral problems, including abnormal repetitive behaviors like feather damaging behavior and stereotypy. In addition to contributing to pet relinquishment, these behaviors are important as potential indicators of diminished psychological well-being. While abnormal behaviors are common in captive animals, their presence and/or severity varies between animals of the same species that are experiencing the same environmental conditions.

Performance on the Hamilton search task, and the influence of lateralization, in captive orange-winged Amazon parrots (Amazona amazonica).

Psittacines are generally considered to possess cognitive abilities comparable to those of primates. Most psittacine research has evaluated performance on standardized complex cognition tasks, but studies of basic cognitive processes are limited. We tested orange-winged Amazon parrots (Amazona amazonica) on a spatial foraging assessment, the Hamilton search task.