Channel One: Behavior (point-sampling)

Feed/Drink (FD) – Any ingestion of food.  Often this will involve the individual gathering foodwith its trunk and lifting it into its mouth.

Dusting (DS) – Individual lifts quantities of sand, dust, or dirt and tosses onto own body with trunk.  May include water bathing, when the individual douses own body with water.

Digging (DG) – Individual is removing substrate with foot (usually front foot) or tusk.

Locomotion (LO) – Individual is moving forward or backward.  May be walking or trotting.

Manipulate Object or environment (MO) – Individual moves, pushes, tosses or picks up objects within its environment such as grass, rocks, sticks, dirt or sand.

Manipulate Enrichment (ME) – Individual moves, pushes, tosses, or picks up enrichment provided.  Does not include food items or components of the environment such as rocks or dirt.  This does include the ìtraining wallî and attached chains. 

Rub Substrate (RB) – Individual rubs body against a substrate such as a rock face or wall.  Does not include head scrape (HS) or any object manipulation (ME).  Does not result in injury to subject.

Self-Directed Behavior (SF) – Individual touches, rubs, or grooms own body.  May use mouth, trunk, or appendages to contact any area of the body.  Do not confuse with any self-aggressive behavior.  Does not include self-sucking behaviors (SS): see below.

Self-suck (SS) – Individual uses mouth or trunk to suck on a specific area of own body.  May include nipple sucking with the trunk or trunk sucking with the mouth.

Social Affiliation (AF) – Prosocial behaviors such as social play, trunk tangle, or caressing with a conspecific.

Social Aggression (AG) – Aggressive behavior that involves contact between conspecifics.  Includes attacks with trunk, mouth, trunk or legs, sparring, head butt, pushing, and tusking.  Does not include aggression to keepers.

Threat/Display (TH) – Agonistic behavior that indicates aggression between conspecifics but does not involve contact.  May include mock charge, charge, and threat display with ears erect and held outward. Does not include threats or displays directed to keepers.

Social Submissive (SB) – Individual indicates submission through behaviors such as pawing, arched back, or foot swinging.  Usually accompanied by ear flat against head and in conjunction with agonistic behavior from a conspecific.

Undesirable Behavior (UN) – Individual engages in leg bite, leg lift, kick, foot slam, head butt, head scrape, blowing body, squatting, or head toss. See all-occurrence data section for behavior descriptions.

Stand (ST) – Individual is more or less stationary in an upright position.  No other behaviors are occurring simultaneously.Lie (LI) – Individual is in lateral recumbence. Weight is no longer supported by legs.

Working with trainer (WT) – Individual is actively engaged with trainer. May or may not be correctly following commands.  This includes responding to commands to enter an area from a distance.

Ignoring trainer (IT) – Individual is deliberately disengaged from trainer and his/her commands.  May be accompanied by trainerís commands to engage. Ensure that this is not confused with instances of incorrect responses to trainer commands, which would be coded as work with trainer (WT).

Receive Reward (RR) – Individual receives food reinforcement from trainer.  Must be engaged in training session.  Do not confuse with receiving food during feeding session.

Aggression to trainer (AT) – Individual makes aggressive move towards trainer. May be a reaching lunge with trunk or running forward as charge.

Out of view (OV) – Individual is not in view. May have been moved to another area in mid-session.

Elimination (EL) – Individual defecates or urinates.

Other (OT) – Individual is engaging in a behavior not covered in the ethogram descriptions above.

Channel Two: Social proximity (point-time sampling)

Contact (CT) – animal is physically touching a conspecific.  May be active contact such as play-fighting, or passive contact such as resting against each other.

Proximate (PR) – animal is within one body length from a conspecific.  May be stationary or locomoting.

Distant (DS) – individual is greater than one body length from a conspecific but still within view. May be stationary or locomoting.

Far-Distant (FD) – individual is out of view of other conspecifics.

Channel Three: Location (point-time sampling)

Outside on display (OD)

Inside on display (ID)

Inside off display (IO)

Inside training (IT)

Channel Four: Substrate (point-time sampling)

Concrete (C)

Sand/Dirt (S)

Water (W)

Other (O)

All-occurrence sampling

Leg bite (LB) – Individual raises leg to mouth and bites down on leg (usually back leg).  May be resting leg on raised surface.

Leg Lift/Kick (AL) – Individual raises leg (usually back leg) forward towards mouth, laterally outwards or straight back.  May be a swift kicking motion or a deliberate raising of the leg onto a surface. If leg is mouthed at all, score as leg bite (LB). Do not confuse with passive leg movements that may be simply shifting weight from side to side.  Foot must be raised at least one foot (12 inches) above the surface of the ground to be scored

Foot slam (FS) – Individual violently strikes foot (usually back foot) into surface.  This does not include less aggressive movement of digging (DG) into substrate.

Head butt (HB) – Individual hits head into surface with force.  May hit front or side of head.  Not to be confused with head scrape (HS) see below.

Head scrape (HS) – Individual scrapes head along surface.  Usually is lateral surface of head.

Blowing body (BL) – Individual directs trunk towards underside or genitals and blows onto those areas. Does not use any substrate such as dirt or sand in this case.

Squatting (SQ) – Individual lowers posterior of body by flexing back legs.

Social Affiliation (AF) – Prosocial behaviors such as social play, trunk tangle, or caressing with a conspecific.

Social Aggression (AG) – Aggressive behavior that involves contact between conspecifics. Includes attacks with trunk, mouth, trunk or legs, sparring, head butt, pushing, and tusking.  Does not include aggression to keepers.

Threat/Display (TH) – Agonistic behavior that indicates aggression between conspecifics but does not involve contact.  May include mock charge, charge, and threat display with ears erect and held outward.  Does not include threats or displays directed to keepers.

Social Submissive (SB) – Individual indicates submission through behaviors such as pawing, arched back, or foot swinging. Usually accompanied by ear flat against head and in conjunction with agonistic behavior from a conspecific.

Object throw at public (OP) – Individual throws feces, rocks or other objects towards public area.

Object throw at keeper (OK) – Individual throws feces, rocks or other objects towards keeper or keeper area.

Object throw at self (OS) – Individual throws feces, rocks, or other objects at self.  Not to be confused with dusting (DS) with dirt, sand or dust.

Trumpet vocalization (TV)

Purr/Rumble vocalization (PV)

Other vocalization (OV) – May include slurp, scream...

Displace (DS) – Individual moves towards conspecific and overtakes the position of that individual.

Is Displaced (ID) – Individual is displaced by conspecific (see above definition).

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