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Record W4406336087 · doi:10.1017/awf.2024.72

Early-life enrichment in American mink (<i>Neogale vison</i>): Effects of juvenile physical enrichment on behaviour, temperament, and long-term stereotypic behaviour

2025· article· en· W4406336087 on OpenAlexafffund
Gabrielle B Clark, María Díez‐León, Rebecca K. Meagher

Bibliographic record

VenueAnimal Welfare · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldVeterinary
TopicAnimal Behavior and Welfare Studies
Canadian institutionsNova Scotia Department of AgricultureDalhousie University
FundersMitacs
KeywordsTemperamentMinkJuvenileAmerican minkAnimal welfarePsychologyAnimal-assisted therapyEnvironmental enrichmentDevelopmental psychologyMaternal deprivationPet therapyTerm (time)BiologySocial psychologyPersonalityEcologyNeuroscience

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

) to combat stereotypic behaviour and behaviours or temperaments associated with poor welfare (e.g. inactivity, fear, and aggression). This enrichment is provided early in life, but it is unclear the age at which enrichment is most effective at preventing stereotypic behaviour and ameliorating welfare. Here, a group of enriched kits (EK) were provided with multiple enrichments that were periodically exchanged to renew novelty from 4-15 weeks of age, earlier than typical enrichment provision on farms, after which they were housed with a single standard enrichment into adulthood. The effects of EK enrichment on kit behaviours and long-term stereotypic behaviour were compared to that of two groups reared with a single standard enrichment (standard housed; SH and enriched at whelping; EW). Inactivity in the nest-box was decreased in EK kits as juveniles relative to other groups, however, social play was reduced and lying awake was increased compared to EW and SH juveniles, respectively. Stereotypic behaviour in the kits as adults was not prevented by EK interventions; in fact, EK kits may have developed more diverse sub-types of stereotypic behaviour than EW and SH kits. Moreover, kit temperament did not appear to be affected. EK enrichment may have been ineffective in improving welfare due to the timing of its removal or potential frustration induced by its removal. Recommendations are provided for future research regarding critical periods of enrichment to improve welfare in species such as farmed mink.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.014
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.014
GPT teacher head0.311
Teacher spread0.297 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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