Effect of Age and Level of Cognitive Function on Spontaneous and Exploratory Behaviors in the Beagle Dog

Abstract

Cognitively characterized young and aged beagle dogs were administered six different spontaneous behavior tests, which provided measures of locomotion, exploration, and social interaction. Consistent with our previous findings, we obtained no overall effect of age on locomotion. We did find, however, that for the aged dogs locomotion correlated with level of cognitive function, being lowest in age-unimpaired dogs and highest in impaired dogs. Exploratory behavior, as measured by response to novelty, varied with age, with young dogs scoring the highest. Young dogs spent more time with novel toys and a person, responded more to a silhouette of a dog, and interacted more with a model dog compared to aged dogs. Among the aged dogs, age-unimpaired dogs spent the greatest amount of time sitting or standing beside a person whereas age-impaired dogs spent the most time reacting to a reflection in a mirror. The age-impaired dogs show undirected, stereotypical types of behavioral patterns. These differences in activity patterns may be linked to underlying age-associated neuropathology.