Assessing the 'whole animal': a free choice profiling approach

The qualitative assessment of animal behaviour summarizes the different asp ects of an animal's dynamic style of interaction with the environment, usin g descriptors such as 'confident', 'nervous', 'calm' or 'excitable'. Scient ists frequently use such terms in studies of animal personality and tempera ment, but, wary of anthropomorphism, are reluctant to do so in studies of a nimal welfare. We hypothesize that qualitative behaviour assessment, in des cribing behaviour as an expressive process, may have a stronger observation al foundation than is currently recognized, and may be of use as an integra tive welfare assessment tool. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the inter- and intraobserver reliability of spontanous qualitative assessments of pig, Sus scrofa, behaviour provided by nine naive observers. We used an experimental methodology called 'free choice profiling' (FCP), which gives observers complete freedom to choose their own descriptive terms. Data were analysed with generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA), a multivariate statis tical technique associated with FCP. Observers achieved significant agreeme nt in their assessments of pig behavioural expression in four separate test s, and could accurately repeat attributing expressive scores to individual pigs across these tests. Thus the spontaneous qualitative assessment of pig behaviour showed strong internal validity under our controlled experimenta l conditions. In conclusion we suggest that qualitative behaviour assessmen t reflects a 'whole animal' level of organization, which may guide the inte pretation of behavioural and physiological measurements in terms of an anim al's overall welfare state. (C) 2001 The Association for the Study of Anima l Behaviour.