Animal Movement Sciences

Course goals

• The student can list new technologies to monitor animals and can describe how these can be used to monitor wellbeing of animals
• The student can explain the physiological response to exercise in terms of the main changes in respiration and cardiac adaptation to exercise.
• The student can explain the basic compensatory mechanisms to lameness and can argue why certain measurement tools are (not) suitable to identify lameness in different species.
• The student is able to compare the different gaits the selected species (dog, cow and horse) may show and discuss the mechanics behind them.
• The student is able to compare important anatomical structures between species and can explain how these relate to the locomotor capacity of those species
• The student can argue the strengths and weaknesses of visual assessment of gait. (state of the art eye tracking technology will be used to understand the pitfalls of visual gait assessment)
• The student can compare the different methods used (kinetics, kinematics and electromyography) to describe locomotion in animals and can recommend which method to use in given situations
• The student can assess the quality of selected published studies, based on the study design, collected data and data analysis/statistics
• The student is able to use kinetic and kinematic measurement tools
• The student can compose simple, but well demarcated research question. The research question must be answerable using the tools discussed in this course.
• The student can compose a simple study design to study locomotion in a chosen species.

Content