Emotional contagion in sheep and its role in animal welfare

Emotional Contagion (EC), i.e. the capacity to express a motor emotional pattern when ob- serving another subject, can influence the welfare of animals, especially in social species like sheep. This research aimed to show evidence of EC in sheep and compare to previous stud- ies the indicators of positive/negative emotions during the anticipation of a rewarding/aversive event. The experiment was conducted on 24 ewes aged 5 ± 0.5 years (none pregnant or lactating), divided into 4 groups. Two ewes per group were selected to receive a 15 days training de- signed to anticipate rewarding/aversive events via classic conditioning, using visual and audi- tory stimuli. Each couple was then tested with one couple of naïve ewes picked from the same group. Stimuli and training/test phases were randomized. Behaviours shown before and after stimuli were used as research data. Effect of treatment was analysed after normalization of data, using a mixed linear model. Pre- liminary results showed that trained ewes spent more time: a) in activity when anticipating the positive event (p<0.1), b) looking at the box when anticipating the negative event (p<0.5). On the test day trained and naïve ewes showed a prevalence of looking at the box when antici- pating the negative event (p<0.1 both). EC seemed to have an impact on the looking direction, but not on the behavioural activity. This might be due to the increased group size, in that social buffering or spatial reduction could have affected the animals. These results and further research will trigger a better man- agement of in-group farmed animals.