Making a Tiger’s Day: Free-Operant Assessment and Environmental Enrichment to Improve the Daily Lives of Captive Bengal Tigers (Panthera tigris tigris)
There are more captive tigers in the United States than there are wild tigers in the entire world. Many animals under human care engage in problem behaviors such as excessive grooming and aggression, although the origin of these behaviors is typically unknown. Environmental enrichment may mitigate these issues in captive animals of all kinds. In […]
Fecal stress, nutrition and reproductive hormones for monitoring environmental impacts on tigers (Panthera tigris)
Non-invasive stress and nutritional hormone analysis in relation to ecological and other biological indices have tremendous potential to address environmental disturbance impacts on wildlife health. To this end, we examined the relation between glucocorticoid (GC) and thyroid (T3) hormone indices of disturbance and nutritional stress in response to ACTH and TSH challenges in captive tigers, […]
Environmental effects on the behavior of zoo-housed lions and tigers, with a case study of the effects of a visual barrier on pacing
Tigers and lions in the wild are nocturnal nonhuman animals who may hunt and mate opportunistically during daylight hours. In captivity, they spend most time on exhibit sleeping or pacing. To better understand their activity budget, this study examined the daily behavior patterns of 2 Sumatran tigers and 3 African lions in different housings. The […]
The behavior of circus tigers during transport
The behavior of two tigers (Panthera tigris) individually caged and transported once for 4.25 h and the behavior of four tigers that were transported twice for 4.2 and 4.5 h while caged as a group was analyzed. The tigers were videotaped during transport and the amount of time spent pacing, lying, and standing and walking […]
Relative contributions of urine and anal-sac secretions in scent marks of large felids
A hypothesis generated from field observations of lions and tigers was tested in a zoo setting. The presence of a whitish material in urine marks, detected by visual inspection, led to the sumrise that anal-sac secretions were expelled along with urine. This hypothesis was evaluated by labelling anal-sace secretions of various felids with an inert […]
Chemical communication in large carnivores: Urine-marking frequencies in captive tigers and lions
Environmental and social pres-sures can result in interspecies differences in mark-ing behaviours. There is a strong relationship between marking behaviour and the environment. Therefore, closely related species that show behav-ioural differences in the wild may have different scent marking strategies. We conducted a compara-tive study of the urine-marking behaviours of tigers and lions in captivity […]