The Use of Guanfacine to Mediate Anxiety-related Reactivity and Reduce Associated Agonistic Behavior in Two Pigtail Macaques (Macaca nemestrina).

Guanfacine, an α2 adrenoceptor agonist, has been used to successfully treat self-injurious behavior in nonhuman primates, including macaques (Macaca mulatta) and baboons (Papio anubis). It does so by facilitating a correction to the dopaminergic system that mediates a reduction in impulsivity and reactivity. Given this, we assessed the potential efficacy of guanfacine to treat socially directed agonistic behavior in primates with an apparent reactive behavioral phenotype. We present data from 2 pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina): an intact adult male housed in a breeding group, and an experimentally naive adult female living in a research setting with her social partner. Baseline behavioral assessments suggested that both macaques showed extreme responses to external stressors that triggered them to aggress social partners often leading to wounding that required veterinary intervention. Both animals were tracked during the course of 1 y. Once treated regularly with guanfacine, both animals showed significant reduction in their agonistic behavior and the rate at which they wounded other animals. Indeed, in the year since the female has been treated with guanfacine she has never wounded her cagemate. By collecting regular and detailed behavioral observations on the male in the breeding colony, we were able to identify triggers for his aggression and to track the behavioral changes evidenced after guanfacine treatment. These data supported our hypothesis that his aggression reflected extreme reactivity to external stressors, rather than general anxiety. Importantly, we saw only a limited and short-lived reduction in the male's affiliative behavioral rates, and thus guanfacine had no sedative effect, but did successfully reduce his reactivity and resultant agonism and wounding.

Behavioral Evaluation of Laboratory-housed Ferrets (Mustela Putorius Furo) in Different Enclosure Sizes.

The domestic ferret (Mustela putorius furo) is a common research model for infectious disease and behavioral studies. Ferrets are social animals that are commonly pair-housed. The United States has no species-specific regulatory standards for housing ferrets. Optimal enclosure dimensions have also not been investigated in this species, and cage sizes reported in the literature vary. Adequate space is an important animal welfare consideration, as smaller cages have been linked to increased incidence of stress- or boredom-related behaviors in some species. Here, we evaluated activity budget and space utilization in 2 different enclosure sizes for pair-housed female ferrets (n = 12). Single cages measured 78.7×78.7×45.7cm; double cages were comprised of 2 single cages connected by a short tunnel measuring 17.8 cm. Three pairs of ferrets were housed in each cage size and continuous video recordings were captured for 2 wk prior to crossover to the other cage size. The overall activity budget was similar between groups, with the predominant behavior being inactivity (89%). Stereotypic behaviors, such as cage biting or escape attempts, were infrequent (<0.1%) in both groups. Ferrets in double cages remained in the same cage as their partner 96% of the time, suggesting that social support is very valuable. Our results suggest that ferrets in both cage sizes experienced satisfactory welfare conditions. Our findings also suggest that while cage size is not the only determinant of conspecific aggression, larger cages may be an effective intervention to ameliorate aggression in certain ferrets based on signalment or behavioral history, with particular utility as a potential alternative to re-pairing or single-housing. This study provides valuable information to guide animal care and use programs regarding appropriate ferret housing.

Capuchins (Sapajus apella) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) fail to attend to the functional spatial relationship between a tool and a reward.

Capuchins (Sapajus apella) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) participated in 3 experiments in which they were presented with 2 objects, one appropriately oriented and the other inappropriately oriented to retrieve a food reward by pulling, replicating prior experiments with nonhuman primates described as evaluating "tool choice." Choice patterns were analyzed to assess whether monkeys learned that tools needed to be oriented with part of the tool on the far side of the reward to pull in the food. Both species learned to choose appropriately oriented tools after a similar number of sessions with a cane-shaped tool in the first task. Both species also transferred to a new tool shape in the second task, but squirrel monkeys' performance on particular trials suggested they did not use the functional relationship between the tool and the food to guide their choices. Tool shapes and configurations in the final task were designed to control for the potential use of extraneous spatial cues. Neither capuchins nor squirrel monkeys chose appropriately oriented tools above chance in control trials. Results suggest both species relied on other spatial cues to perform in previous tasks rather than learning to attend to the functional spatial relationship between a tool and a reward. Species differences emerged in the second task only, as capuchins mastered performance with the new tool shape faster than squirrel monkeys and seemed to use a more complex set of rules to guide their choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).