Primate enrichment categories: A literature review of current trends
Environmental enrichment aims to enhance primate wellbeing by providing physical and mental stimuli to address the biological and psychological needs of individuals. However, lack of knowledge regarding the development of enrichment research hampers implementers and future inquiries. Therefore, a collection of data from 227 peer-reviewed and freely available articles on primate enrichment (published from 1978 […]
Comparison of Animal Welfare Assessment Tools and Methodologies: Need for an Effective Approach for Captive Elephants in Asia
Welfare is a fundamental aspect of animal management and conservation. In light of growing public awareness and welfare concerns about captive elephants, there is an urgent need for comprehensive, globally coordinated efforts for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) that participate in religious, logging, or tourist activities in range countries where the majority reside, and where welfare issues have […]
Stereotypic Behaviour in Elephants
Stereotypic behaviour is undesirable in zoos, especially when it occurs in large sentient mammals such as elephants because there is evidence that it is often linked to poor welfare conditions and suboptimal management. Elephant managers make great efforts to prevent, or at least reduce, the performance of stereotypic behaviours and this is perceived as beneficial […]
Case study: Visual barriers reduce pacing in captive tigers
Captive large felines are prone to abnormal repetitive behaviors like pacing, which are associated with welfare issues. Visual contact without the opportunity to engage in appropriate behavior is known to increase pacing. To better understand the relationship between pacing and conspecific visual contact, we investigated this effect by conducting a barrier experiment on a male-female […]
Advancing zoo animal welfare through data science: scaling up continuous improvement efforts
Advancing animal welfare in zoos is a multifaceted endeavor that lies at the core of their conservation and educational missions. While zoos have made significant strides in improving the wellbeing of their animal residents, challenges persist in ensuring a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to continuous improvement. Some of these challenges stem from the exponential growth of […]
Compassion Fatigue in Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Caregivers: Prevalence, Contributing Factors, and Coping Mechanisms
Compassion fatigue (CF) refers to the exhaustion and distress caused by the demands of caring for others. CF occurs in a variety of helping professions, including physicians, nurses, educators, social workers and animal caregivers, and is known to adversely impact both caregivers’ quality of life and the care they provide. This study assessed the prevalence, […]
Assessing the impact of environmental enrichment on behavior in understudied armadillo species: A case study
The implementation of environmental enrichment (EE) can be effective in promoting zoo animal welfare by enhancing the performance of natural or species-typical behaviors. Research on the effects of EE is biased towards larger mammalian species, with less charismatic species being overlooked. Armadillos are one such overlooked example. A captive environment that results in inactivity, obesity, […]
The Zone Overlap Index: A new measure of shared resource use in the zoo
It is important that the environment provided in the zoo is relevant to the species being housed and its suitability be easily assessed by personnel. As shared space and resources can overlap in a zoo’s enclosure a tool is required to measure the effects of such overlap between individual animals in a shared enclosure. This […]
Activity budget and behaviour of giant otters Pteronura brasiliensis at Parken Zoo, Eskilstuna, Sweden
Modern zoos must ensure the welfare and conservation of their captive animals. For this, it is recommended to provide cognitive stimuli (‘enrichment’), good habitat management and adequate nutrition amongst other things. Assessment of animal welfare should include behavioural observation. One frequently used approach compares the activity budget of zoo animals with their wild conspecifics, carefully […]
Never be mute about bird welfare: Swanning around with environmental enrichment
Environmental enrichment (EE) is commonly provided to animals managed under human care, being beneficial to behavioral diversity and improving animal welfare. Use of EE appears to be particularly beneficial to individual wild animals spending a short period of time in captivity, for example, as part of conservation or rehabilitation programs. This paper documents a case […]