TONGUE-PLAYING AND HEART-RATE IN CALVES

Tongue-playing is one of the typical stereotypies of fattening bulls, dairy cows and calves. The purpose of this study was to investigate wh ether tongue-playing has a de-arousal function by measuring heart rate s before, during and after tongue-playing. Five Japanese Black (a beef breed) calves aged 6 months were investigated for 7 h. The periods of inclusive tongue-playing exceeding 20 s, which contained tongue-playi ng and para tongue-playing, were investigated. As a result, heart rate s during inclusive tongue-playing decreased significantly and increase d again significantly after that. It is suggested that tongue-playing has a de-arousal function which reduces sympathetic nervous activity. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.