Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Understanding how farmed animals perceive and differentiate objects in their environment has important implications for animal cognition and welfare. Previous studies in agricultural species have largely tested whether animals can be trained to recognize object features, leaving unanswered which features untrained animals naturally rely on to differentiate objects. Here, we introduce a simple paradigm that quantifies responsiveness to changes in object features by measuring transit time from the entrance of an alley to an object placed at its midpoint. We used this paradigm to test the sensitivity of cattle to changes in object size, global shape, and local contours. Although we did not find a significant effect for object size, changes to both global shape and local contours significantly increased transit times. These findings suggest that cattle are especially responsive to shape information and flexibly use multiple levels of shape information without being trained for visual discrimination. Our results document a previously unexplored aspect of ungulate perception and demonstrate a simple, ecologically valid method with minimal training requirements for assessing spontaneous object discrimination in large animals.</p>