The backtest in pigs revisited-Inter-situational behaviour and animal classification

Our results regarding the inter-situational consistency in the backtest behaviour of piglets indicate a coping disposition that is environmentally modulated, i.e., the piglets prefer a certain coping style, but this is shapeable by proximate factors that are determined via environmental or situational issues such as individual experience and age, social conditions, or the behavioural test situation. This result is consistent with a previous study of intra-situational behaviour, in which the backtest behaviour of piglets seemed to be more than just noise or random but also less than a fixed strategy as originally hypothesized. The results also show that correlation analysis is related to category analysis, but in the case of a category analysis, care must be taken during animal classification. Nevertheless, the backtest could be a useful method for investigating individual adaptations to the different challenges of a farm environment.