{"id":97553,"date":"2018-10-09T12:53:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T18:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/animal-scientist-temple-grandin-shares-insights-on-animal-fear-overbreeding\/"},"modified":"2018-10-09T12:53:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T18:53:58","slug":"animal-scientist-temple-grandin-shares-insights-on-animal-fear-overbreeding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/animal-scientist-temple-grandin-shares-insights-on-animal-fear-overbreeding\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal scientist Temple Grandin shares insights on animal fear, overbreeding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Animal
Animal scientist Temple Grandin talks with Kelly Fuensalida at the Best Horse Practices Summit on Monday at the Strater Hotel. Grandin\u2019s autism has given her insight into how animals think and experience the world.<\/span>Mary Shinn\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science, shared her insight into the sensory world that animals experience with equine enthusiasts and professionals Monday at the Strater Hotel.<\/p>\n

Grandin\u2019s autism allows her to understand the world of sound and pictures that cattle, horses and dogs experience, and it led to her pioneering work in the slaughterhouse industry to make operations more humane and keep animals calmer. The Colorado State University professor<\/a> has also authored several books, including, \u201cAnimals in Translation.\u201d<\/p>\n

She shared her insight around the fear animals experience and the detriments of overbreeding at the Best Horse Practices Summit<\/a>. The annual summit was founded by Maddy Butcher, a Mancos resident, and focuses on practical and applicable knowledge for those who work with horses.<\/p>\n

Grandin visited Durango in 2015<\/a> when her book, \u201cThinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism,\u201d was assigned to all Fort Lewis College freshmen. She visited Sunnyside Meats, a local meat processing facility and attended other events at FLC.<\/p>\n

\"Temple
Temple Grandin speaks during the Best Horse Practices Summit on Monday at the Strater Hotel in Durango. She is a renown animal scientist, author and professor at Colorado State University.<\/span>Mary Shinn\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Animals live in a sensory world, and to better understand their behavior, it is important to become more observant and try to see the world as they do, Grandin said.<\/p>\n

Animals experience core emotions such as fear, rage, panic, lust, caring and play, she said. They will also exhibit seeking behavior, similar to curiosity.<\/p>\n

Fear can be the trigger for all kinds of negative behavior, but much of it can be overcome if animals are exposed to common triggers.<\/p>\n

For example, it may not be good enough to simply take a horse to the race track before race day. They need to be exposed to flags and loud sounds before racing.<\/p>\n

If animals fear a particular object, such as a flag, sometimes they can overcome it if they are allowed to approach the object on their own, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you force an animal to do something, you get a lot more fear stress,\u201d Grandin said.<\/p>\n

Some of the stress in dogs can be caused from living sheltered lives and not having enough diverse experiences, she said.<\/p>\n

Animal handlers also need to ensure that an animal\u2019s first experience with anything is positive because scary first impressions can be hard to overcome.<\/p>\n

She also highlighted overbreeding that has caused physical and neurological problems.<\/p>\n

In bulldogs, overbreeding has limited their ability to breathe normally, and in Arabian horses, it has led to extremely concave faces, she said.<\/p>\n

Breeding more productive laying hens leads to flighty birds that flap their feathers off, she said.<\/p>\n

The genetic problems caused by overbreeding come on slowly, and people don\u2019t notice them, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it bad becoming normal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Grandin was one of many experts who presented at the summit, scheduled to dovetail with the Cowboy Poetry Gathering.<\/p>\n

The summit, a nonprofit event, is designed to provide scientific information in an accessible way, Butcher said.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientist: Dogs, horses experience core feelings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[382,2395,13,83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animal","tag-animal-science","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97553"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}