Positive perception of human stroking by lambs: Qualitative behaviour assessment confirms previous interpretation of quantitative data

Abstract Qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA) was used to validate previous published interpretation whether human stroking has beneficial effects on lambs prematurely separated from their mothers. For a period of 8 weeks a familiar human (FH) subjected 22 Romane lambs to a gentling treatment based on strokes. At the age of 8 weeks each lamb was placed in the experimental pen and tested. Half of them received the gentling treatment (STROKE) for 8 min, and the others were simply exposed to the human presence for the same period of time (PRESENCE). Animals were equipped for heart rate recording and tests were video-recorded. These behavioural and heart rate variability data have been already published. A free choice profiling approach was used to instruct ten observers in qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA). Short video sequences of the tests were randomly presented and scored by the observers unaware of any information about the quantitative data recorded. QBA data were analysed using Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA). The GPA consensus profile explained a high percentage of variation among the 10 observers, and differed significantly from the mean randomised profile (P  2  = 4.49, P  2  = 4.48, P