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Where Are Zoos Going—or Are They Gone?
Contributor(s):: Safina, Carl
To some, zoos are prisons exploiting animals. In reality zoos range from bad to better. I make this distinction: A bad zoo makes animals work for it; a good zoo works for animals. Good zoos do effective conservation work and continually strive to improve exhibits, relevance to conservation, and...
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Preliminary investigation of social interactions and feeding behavior in captive group-housed Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus Harrisii)
Contributor(s):: Skelton, Candice J. A., Stannard, Hayley J.
As the number of Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) in captivity increases, an understanding of captive social dynamics and behavior is becoming increasingly important. In the wild, devils are solitary, although sometimes, they congregate to feed on a large carcass. However, it is common to...
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A Postzoo Future: Why Welfare Fails Animals in Zoos
Contributor(s):: Pierce, Jessica, Bekoff, Marc
Discussions on the welfare of nonhuman animals in zoos tend to focus on incremental improvements without addressing the underlying problem of captivity. But alterations to the conditions of zoo captivity are irrelevant for animals. Real zoo reform will involve working to completely change the...
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Epidemiology of tattoo skin disease in captive common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): Are males more vulnerable than females?
Contributor(s):: Bressem, Marie-Françoise Van, Waerebeek, Koen Van, Duignan, Pádraig J.
Clinical and epidemiological features of tattoo skin disease (TSD) are reported for 257 common bottlenose dolphins held in 31 facilities in the Northern Hemisphere. Photographs and biological data of 146 females and 111 males were analyzed. Dolphins were classified into three age classes: 0–3...
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Environmental Enrichments for a Group of Captive Macaws: Low Interaction Does Not Mean Low Behavioral Changes
Contributor(s):: Reimer, Jéssica, Maia, Caroline Marques, Santos, Eliana Ferraz
Environmental enrichment has been widely used to improve conditions for nonhuman animals in captivity. However, there is no consensus about the best way to evaluate the success of enrichments. This study evaluated whether the proportion of time spent interacting with enrichments indicated the...
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Milkmaid Bears and Savage Mates: The Cultural Exploitation of Real and Fictive White Bears from the Elizabethan Period to the Present
Contributor(s):: Woolf, Judith
The paper considers the cultural exploitation of bears, especially white ones, from the late sixteenth century to the present, both in drama and literary fiction and in the bear pits, theatres, circuses, zoos, and natural habitats in which real biological bears have found themselves mythologized...
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Motivations for the Ownership of Captive Lemurs in Madagascar
Contributor(s):: Reuter, Kim E., Schaefer, Melissa S.
The live capture of primates is occurring throughout the tropics and can be a threat to their conservation. Primates are owned as pets for a variety of reasons. Studies of the motivations for primate ownership have been conducted in several countries where they are endemic, but no study has...
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Scottish wildcat (Felis silvestris grampia) personality and subjective well-being: Implications for captive management
Contributor(s):: Gartner, Marieke Cassia, Weiss, Alexander
Research in animal personality has been increasing over the last decade, as scientists realize its importance to health outcomes. In particular, personality has sometimes been used, in conjunction with other tools, for aspects of captive management, including decreasing stress, increasing...
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Influence of enclosure size on the distances covered and paced by captive tigers (Panthera tigris)
Contributor(s):: Breton, Grégory, Barrot, Salomé
In the wild, tigers live in large individual territories ranging from 7 to 1000km2 depending on the region and prey abundance. However, in captivity, the animal's environment is strongly reduced, and the size of the enclosure provided varies between zoos. It has been shown that animals occupying...
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Differential preference for ultraviolet light among captive birds from three ecological habitats
Contributor(s):: Ross, Megan R., Gillespie, Katie L., Hopper, Lydia M., Bloomsmith, Mollie A., Maple, Terry L.
With receptors for red, blue, green, and ultraviolet-A light, birds have tetrachromatic vision. For birds, ultraviolet (UV) light is important for a number of their behaviors, including mate selection, foraging, and nesting. Many captive birds, however, are housed indoors without access to...
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Auditory and visual threat recognition in captive-reared Great Lakes piping plovers (Charadrius melodus)
Contributor(s):: Saunders, Sarah P., Ong, Theresa Wei Ying, Cuthbert, Francesca J.
Captive rearing of endangered species for later release is a method used to augment critically small populations, although studies have shown lower survival and fitness for individuals raised in captivity. Since 1992, recovery efforts for the endangered Great Lakes piping plover population have...
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Space allowance and the behaviour of captive southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons)
Contributor(s):: Descovich, Kristin A., Lisle, Allan T., Johnston, Stephen, Phillips, Clive J. C.
Captive southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) often display indicators of sub-standard welfare, including aggression and stereotypical pacing. To determine if space availability influences the welfare of wombats, the behaviour of three groups of L. latifrons (n=3) was studied in...
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Social housing of surplus males of Javan langurs (Trachypithecus auratus): Compatibility of intact and castrated males in different social settings
Contributor(s):: Dröscher, Iris, Waitt, Corri D.
Javan langurs (Trachypithecus auratus) naturally form social groups containing typically only one adult male. However, this social system is problematic with regard to captive management, as it can lead to the production of surplus males. The study assessed if castration is a feasible strategy to...
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Sex ratio, conflict dynamics, and wounding in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)
Contributor(s):: Beisner, B. A., Jackson, M. E., Cameron, A., McCowan, B.
Rhesus macaques, like many other primates, live in stable, multi-male multi-female groups in which adult females typically outnumber adult males. The number of males in multi-male/multi-female groups is most commonly discussed in terms of mate competition, where the sex ratio is a function of an...
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Role of vocalisations and social housing in breeding in captive howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya)
Contributor(s):: Farmer, Holly L., Plowman, Amy B., Leaver, Lisa A.
Over the last 12 years the European captive population of black and gold howler monkeys, Alouatta caraya, has increased at a slow rate and many groups have not produced offspring. This study aims to determine the influence of social organisation of captive groups and both performing and hearing...
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Factors influencing the prevalence of stereotypical behaviour in captive cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus)
Contributor(s):: Quirke, Thomas, O’Riordan, Ruth M., Zuur, Alain
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the factors which influence the prevalence of stereotypical behaviour in captive cheetahs. An information theory approach highlighted that the most optimal model was the controllable husbandry factors model with the size of enclosures, group...
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The effect of different types of enrichment on the behaviour of cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) in captivity
Contributor(s):: Quirke, Thomas, O’ Riordan, Ruth M.
Enrichment, in the form of changes to the structure and content of enclosures, in addition to changes to husbandry practice, have been used on a range of felids resulting in increased activity levels and decreased levels of pacing behaviour. It is important to determine what types of enrichment...
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Differential responses of captive southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) to the presence of faeces from different species and male and female conspecifics
Contributor(s):: Descovich, Kristin A., Lisle, Allan T., Johnston, Stephen, Nicolson, Vere, Phillips, Clive J. C.
The southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) appears to use scent marking, including defaecation, for social communication in the wild. This premise assumes that the receiver wombat is able to distinguish between faeces from different sources. To examine this theory, four types of...
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The impact of exhibit type on behaviour of caged and free-ranging tamarins
Contributor(s):: Bryan, Kayley, Bremner-Harrison, Samantha, Price, Eluned, Wormell, Dominic
The lack of appropriate stimuli associated with captive environments has been documented to cause several behavioural and physiological issues in captive species, including loss of natural behaviours, psychopathologies and decreased reproductive success. Providing free-ranging, naturalistic...
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Effects of captivity on house mice behaviour in a novel environment: Implications for conservation practices
Contributor(s):: Courtney Jones, Stephanie K., Munn, Adam J., Byrne, Phillip G.
Captive breeding programmes offer a method for preventing the extinction of threatened species, but often have difficulty establishing self-sustaining populations and generating individuals for release. This difficulty can arise because the behaviour of captive-reared animals differs from wild...
