page_title: Cattle
section_title: Temperament and emotions
hierarchical_section_title: Cattle / Temperament and emotions
caption_attribution_description: English: Cow with posturing ears.
context_page_description: Cattle, or cows and bulls, are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos taurus.
  Cattle are commonly raised as livestock for meat, for milk, and for hides, which are used to make leather. They are used as riding animals and draft animals. Another product of cattle is their dung, which can be used to create manure or fuel. In some regions, such as parts of India, cattle have significant religious meaning. Cattle, mostly small breeds such as the Miniature Zebu, are also kept as pets.
  Around 10,500 years ago, cattle were domesticated from as few as 80 progenitors in central Anatolia, the Levant and Western Iran. According to an estimate from 2011, there are 1.4 billion cattle in the world. In 2009, cattle became one of the first livestock animals to have a fully mapped genome.
context_section_description: In cattle, temperament can affect production traits such as carcass and meat quality or milk yield as well as affecting the animal's overall health and reproduction. Cattle temperament is defined as "the consistent behavioral and physiological difference observed between individuals in response to a stressor or environmental challenge and is used to describe the relatively stable difference in the behavioral predisposition of an animal, which can be related to psychobiological mechanisms". Generally, cattle temperament is assumed to be multidimensional. Five underlying categories of temperament traits have been proposed:
  shyness-boldness
  exploration-avoidance
  activity
  aggressiveness
  sociability
  In a study on Holstein–Friesian heifers learning to press a panel to open a gate for access to a food reward, the researchers also recorded the heart rate and behavior of the heifers when moving along the race towards the food. When the heifers made clear improvements in learning, they had higher heart rates and tended to move more vigorously along the race. The researchers concluded this was an indication that cattle may react emotionally to their own learning improvement.
  Negative emotional states are associated with a bias toward negative responses towards ambiguous cues in judgement tasks.  After separation from their mothers, Holstein calves showed such a cognitive bias indicative of low mood.  A similar study showed that after hot-iron disbudding (dehorning), calves had a similar negative bias indicating that post-operative pain following this routine procedure results in a negative change in emotional state.
  In studies of visual discrimination, the position of the ears has been used as an indicator of emotional state. When cattle are stressed other cattle can tell by the chemicals released in their urine.
  Cattle are very gregarious and even short-term isolation is considered to cause severe psychological stress.  When Aubrac and Friesian heifers are isolated, they increase their vocalizations and experience increased heart rate and plasma cortisol concentrations.  These physiological changes are greater in Aubracs.  When visual contact is re-instated, vocalizations rapidly decline, regardless of the familiarity of the returning cattle, however, heart rate decreases are greater if the returning cattle are familiar to the previously-isolated individual.  Mirrors have been used to reduce stress in isolated cattle.
caption: Ear postures of cows are studied as indicators of their emotional state and overall animal welfare.[64]
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