Content (Syllabus outline)

Fundamental ethological terms

Animal senses and perception of environmental stimuli.

Ability to receive external optical, chemical, mechanical and thermo stimuli.

Physiology of behaviour

Neuroethology, hormones and pheromones, mechanism of general adaptation syndrome.

Biology of behaviour

Perception of stimuli, transmission to the central nervous system, analysis of feeling, reaction of animal.

Genetic of behaviour

Modifications of behaviour in processes of evolution, domestication and ontogeny.

Abnormal behaviour

Abnormal behaviour as deviation from normal behaviour in qualitative and quantitative sense, the changes in daily rhythm, turns to substitute objects, displacement activities, compromise behaviour, vacuum activities, stereotypies.

Animal welfare

Subjective animal world, suffering in connection with health and productivity, suffering and unnatural life, subjective feelings of animals, preference of animals, positive and negative reinforcements, analogy, estimation of animal welfare, the role of farmer in animal welfare.

Ethogram

Functional systems in the most important species of domestic animals

Ethics in animal production

Regulations for animal protection

Animal housing, transportation, handling

Animal observation methods and assessment of social hierarchy in the group.

Prerequisites

a) Prerequisite for inclusion in  work:

Enrolment in the corresponding year of study programme.

b) Prerequisite for performing study obligations:

1) for the accession to the colloquium:

- min 70 % presence on the lectures

- min 80 % presence on the exercises

- 100 % presence on the practice in barns

2) for the accession to the examination:

- passed colloquium