Establishment and Implementation of an Animal Welfare Decision Tree to Evaluate the Welfare of Zoo Animals
During the last few decades, zoos and aquaria have made great improvements in their exhibit designs, feeding routines, social housing conditions, mixed species presentations, and environmental enrichment, as well as in the prevention of infectious and parasitic diseases, to enhance animal welfare. To monitor the effectiveness of all these changes, animal welfare science is needed. […]
Behavioral, neurophysiological and evolutionary perspectives on unihemispheric sleep
Several animals mitigate the fundamental conflict between sleep and wakefulness by engaging in unihemispheric sleep, a unique state during which one cerebral hemisphere sleeps while the other remains awake. Among mammals, unihemispheric sleep is restricted to aquatic species (Cetaceans, eared seals and manatees). In contrast to mammals, unihemispheric sleep is widespread in birds, and may […]