In search of the optimal enrichment program for zoo‐housed animals

• Published in: Zoo biology Vol. 40; no. 6; pp. 527 - 540
• Main Author: Podturkin, Aleksei A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.11.2021
• Subjects: abnormal behavior; Animal behavior; Animal Welfare; Animals; Animals, Zoo; Avoidance behavior; Badgers; Behavior, Animal; Budgets; Canis aureus; case studies; complexity; data collection; Enrichment; environmental enrichment; European badger; evaluation; Exploratory behavior; Female; golden jackal; Housing, Animal; jackals; Meles meles; novel object test; novelty; Place preferences; Robustness; welfare; Zoo animals; zoos; evaluation; complexity; novelty; golden jackal; novel object test; welfare; data collection; European badger
• ISSN: 0733-3188; 1098-2361; 1098-2361
• DOI: 10.1002/zoo.21642

Zoo‐housed animals are regularly exposed to new forms of environmental enrichment to make their lives less predictable. However, providing new enrichment can have unpredictable effects. We evaluated the effectiveness of two enrichment regimes: (1) providing only new enrichments – “Novelty” and (2) only familiar enrichments – “Familiar.” In this case study, enrichment efficacy was assessed using activity budget analysis and novel object tests. The subjects were two focal animals: the golden jackal (Canis aureus) and the European badger (Meles meles). Our results suggest that both assessment methods provided similar conclusions about the animal's welfare. The “Familiar” treatment significantly increased activity and decreased abnormal behavior in the jackal's activity budget, who avoided novel objects in her baseline novel object test. The Novelty treatment resulted in the growth of time the jackal spent in the moat instead of the main enclosure, and an increase in avoidance and abnormal behaviors. In contrast, the badger demonstrated a high intensity of exploratory behavior in the baseline novel object test, and both regimes led to an increase in the activity budget of the badger. We propose that a stable, but complex enrichment can be an effective robust tool to increase animal welfare, but its efficacy depends on the novelty preference of individual animals. A novel object test can be a rapid tool to assess individual animals' novelty preferences, and this information may help to choose optimal enrichment regimes for individual animals. Manageable challenges and complex conditions provided through familiar enrichments may offer more choice and control to animals, leading to robust improvements in animal welfare, as opposed to overwhelming animals with only novel enrichments. Research Highlights Enrichment regime with several familiar methods may lead to robust improvements in animal welfare. A novel object test could be used as a rapid tool to predict the general trend of changes in animal behavior in response to enrichment treatment.