Monitoring the behavior and habitat use of animals to enhance welfare using the ZooMonitor app
Regular monitoring of the behavior, habitat use, and appearance of animals can provide valuable insight into their welfare. These ongoing data can help identify meaningful trends that can be acted upon to enhance welfare, and potentially reveal individual preferences and patterns that can facilitate care tailored to the individual. To provide a low cost, flexible, […]
Assessing the psychological health of captive and wild apes: A response to Ferdowsian et al. (2011)
As many studies of cognition and behavior involve captive animals, assessing any psychological impact of captive conditions is an important goal for comparative researchers. Ferdowsian and colleagues (2011) sought to address whether captive chimpanzees show elevated signs of psychopathology relative to wild apes. They modified a checklist of diagnostic criteria for major depression and posttraumatic […]
Applying behavior-analytic methodology to the science and practice of environmental enrichment in zoos and aquariums
Environmental enrichment in zoos and aquariums is often evaluated at two overlapping levels: published research and day-to-day institutional record keeping. Several authors have discussed ongoing challenges with small sample sizes in between-groups zoological research and have cautioned against the inappropriate use of inferential statistics (Shepherdson, , International Zoo Yearbook, 38, 118–124; Shepherdson, Lewis, Carlstead, Bauman, […]