GROOMINGS

Each row, taken together with the related EVENTS row, represents a grooming event recording during a follow. Groomings are recorded as dyadic pairs.

Should there be multiple individuals, whether groomer or recipient, involved in simultaneous grooming behavior, there should be multiple rows in the GROOMINGS table. There should be one row for each dyad.

Caution

The system’s design cannot distinguish between multiple multi-party grooming events that are recorded as part of a single follow and occur at a given time, and a single, larger, multi-party grooming event recorded in the given follow at the given time.[1]

The related EVENTS row must be a grooming event; it must have an EVENTS.Behavior value of GROOM. This related EVENTS row supplies the time of the grooming and relates to the follow, and the ROLES role related to the event supplies information on the individuals involved.

The initiator and the terminator of the grooming event, when known, must each be one of the individuals who participated in the grooming event. This means the Initiator and Terminator values must be a ROLES.PID value of a ROLES row that has a ROLES.EID equal to the EID of the grooming event. This condition is checked on transaction commit.

The system will generate a warning if the other individual involved in the grooming event is not under study on the date of the follow. This means the related FOLLOWS.Date must be between the BIOGRAPHY_DATA.EntryDate and the BIOGRAPHY_DATA.DepartDate of the individual identified in the GROOMINGS.Other column, inclusive of endpoints.

The system will generate a warning if the other individual involved in the study is not present in the follow at the time of the given event. This means that the individual identified in the GROOMINGS.Other column must have been recorded in the follow as an arriving individual and the EVENTS row related to the arrival has an EVENTS.Start that is the same as or before the starting time[2] of the given event and an EVENTS.Stop that is the same as or after the given event’s ending time[3].

For further information, including additional data integrity rules, see the documentation of the EVENTS table.

GrID (Grooming ID)

A unique, automatically generated, positive integer which serves to identify the row. The value of this column cannot be changed. This column may not be NULL.

EID (Event ID)

The EVENTS.EID identifying the grooming event. The related event contains information on the time of the grooming and is related to the participants in the grooming event.

This column may not be NULL.

Other

The identifier of another individual involved in the grooming event. A BIOGRAPHY_DATA.AnimID value. This column may be NULL when there is no record of another individual being involved in the grooming event.

Initiator

The participant that initiated the grooming. A ROLES.Role value. This column may be NULL when there is no record of who initiated the grooming.

Terminator

The participant that initiated the grooming. A ROLES.Role value. This column may be NULL when there is no record of who terminated the grooming.

Problems

Text describing problems in the grooming observation. This column may be empty text. It need not contain characters, but it may not contain only whitespace characters. This column may not be NULL.

Extractedby

The person who extracted the grooming information from the written records and prepared it for data entry into the database. This column may not be NULL.

[1]

More information related to this problem can be found in the documentation of the AGGRESSIONS table.

[2]

The given event’s EVENTS.Start value.

[3]

The given event’s EVENTS.Stop value.

Page last generated: 2026-05-18 16:14:51 UTC