Does Enrichment Improve Well Being in Animals under Human Care? A Case Study of Two Harbor Seals (Phoca Vitulina)
Harbor seals in the wild live in a stimulating environment; therefore, nonhuman-animal caretakers have increasingly been using environmental enrichment to improve the well being of seals under human care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate an object-based environmental enrichment program during a four-month period on stimulating exploration and play and improving conspecific social […]
Does Enrichment Improve Well Being in Animals under Human Care? A Case Study of Two Harbor Seals (Phoca Vitulina)
Harbor seals in the wild live in a stimulating environment; therefore, nonhuman-animal caretakers have increasingly been using environmental enrichment to improve the well being of seals under human care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate an object-based environmental enrichment program during a four-month period on stimulating exploration and play and improving conspecific social […]
Studying the behaviour and sensory ecology of marine mammals using acoustic recording tags: a review
Many marine animals use sound passively or actively for communication, foraging, predator avoidance, navigation, and to sense their environment. The advent of acoustic recording tags has allowed biologists to get the on-animal perspective of the sonic environment and, in combination with movement sensors, to relate sounds to the activities of the tagged animal. These powerful […]
Serum Retinol, alpha-tocopherol, and lipids in four species of adult captive pinnipeds
Abstract 10.1002/zoo.10075.abs The sera of adult aquarium-held pinnipeds from four species (family Phocidae: harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) and gray seals (Halichoerus grypus); family Otariidae: northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) and California sea lions (Zalophus californianus)) were analyzed for vitamin A (retinol), vitamin E (α-tocopherol), total cholesterol, triglycerides, phospholipids, and fatty acids. Each subject animal was […]
Behavioral effects of environmental enrichment on harbor seals (Phoca vitulina concolor) and gray seals (Halichoerus grypus)
Abstract Zoos and aquariums have been incorporating environmental enrichment into their animal care programs for the past 30 years to increase mental stimulation and promote natural behaviors. However, most attempts to document the effects of enrichment on animal behavior have focused on terrestrial mammals. Staff at the National Aquarium in Baltimore conducted an investigation of […]
A Gray Seal’s (Halichoerus grypus) Responses to Experimenter-Given Pointing and Directional Cues
A gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) was trained to touch a target on its left or right by responding to pointing signals. The authors then tested whether the seal would be able to generalize spontaneously to altered signals. It responded correctly to center pointing and head turning, center upper body turning, and off-center pointing but not […]
Activity Budgets of Captive Cape Fur Seals (Arctocephalus pusillus) Under a Training Regime
Ethograms and time budgets are crucial for the behavioral assessment of nonhuman animals in zoos, and they serve as references for welfare research. This study was conducted to obtain detailed time budgets of trained Cape fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus) in captivity, to evaluate variations of these patterns, and to determine whether abnormal behaviors had been […]
Integrating Tinbergen’s inquiries: Mimicry and play in humans and other social mammals
Visual signals convey emotions and intentions between individuals. Darwin underlined that human facial expressions represent a shared heritage between our species and many other social mammals. Social play is a fertile field to examine the role and the potential communicative function of facial expressions. The relaxed open-mouth (or play face) is a context-specific playful expression, […]