title: Do cattle (Bos taurus) retain an association of a visual cue with a food reward for a year?
abstract: Use of visual cues to locate specific food resources from a distance is a critical ability of animals foraging in a spatially heterogeneous environment. However, relatively little is known about how long animals can retain the learned cue-reward association without reinforcement. We compared feeding behavior of experienced and naive Japanese Black cows (Bos taurus) in discovering food locations in a pasture. Experienced animals had been trained to respond to a visual cue (plastic washtub) for a preferred food (grain-based concentrate) 1 year prior to the experiment, while naive animals had no exposure to the cue. Cows were tested individually in a test arena including tubs filled with the concentrate on three successive days (Days 1-3). Experienced cows located the first tub more quickly and visited more tubs than naive cows on Day 1 (usually P < 0.05), but these differences disappeared on Days 2 and 3. The performance of experienced cows tended to increase from Day 1 to Day 2 and level off thereafter. Our results suggest that Japanese Black cows can associate a visual cue with a food reward within a day and retain the association for 1 year despite a slight decay.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Agriculture, University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan.
authors.forename: Masahiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hirata
authors.forename: Nozomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Takeno
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D002417:Cattle / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D012201:Reward; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: foraging efficiency; learning; memory; reward; visual cue