Advantages of social skills for contest resolution.

ABSTRACT: Animal contests are natural interactions that occur to obtain or defend resources such as food and territory. Selection should favour individuals that can win contests with minimal costs in terms of energy expenditure or injuries. We hypothesized that social skills contribute to animals' assessment abilities in a contest situation and thereby will shorten contest duration. Animals were either raised in early life conditions stimulating the development of social skills, termed socialization or not (control). Contests between 342 pigs at eight weeks old (171 dyads) were studied for opponent assessment ability (using a game theoretical approach), examining duration and escalation, social behaviours performed, injuries and outcome. Contesting dyads were from the same treatment group and varied

SUBMITTER: Camerlink I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6549948 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature