2021 December - 16 articles
Welfare assessments have been largely successful in improving management and quality of life for animals in human care. This has prompted an increased interest in their use for free-ranging wild animals to assess health, environment, and human-induce...
Maintaining Gymnophiona in captivity provides opportunities to study the behaviour and life-history of this poorly known Order, and to investigate and provide species-appropriate welfare guidelines, which are currently lacking. This study focuses on...
Environmental enrichment has been shown to enhance the behavioural repertoire and reduce the occurrence of abnormal behaviours, particularly in zoo-housed mammals. However, evidence of its effectiveness in reptiles is lacking. Previously, it was beli...
Visitors to zoos can have positive, neutral, or negative relationships with zoo animals. This makes human–animal interactions (HAIs) an essential component of welfare and an important consideration in species selection for zoo exhibits and in e...
Long-term evaluations of whether modern zoological exhibits help to maintain variation in the behavior of zoo animals are lacking despite the hope that animals avoid falling into monotonous patterns of behavior or boredom. This study evaluated change...
Individual personalities affect animal experiences of zoo environments, impact on an animal’s coping ability and have potential implications for welfare. Keeper assessments have been identified as a quick and reliable way of capturing data on p...
Characterising the people that work in zoos is a key element of understanding how zoos might better contribute to conservation activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate demographics, early life experiences and perceptions of zoo staff...
Free-choice learning occurs when individuals have autonomy in what and how they learn, and often takes place in informal settings such as zoos. To describe goal-setting and -achievement of biology undergraduates at a regional zoo, we primarily asked:...
Zoological collections are rapidly changing from a place of entertainment to centers of education. Many zoological collections run holiday and weekend clubs with activities aimed at inspiring and enthusing the next generation. The COVID-19 pandemic s...
Wild food plants (WFPs) are consumed by the indigenous communities in various parts of the world for food, nutrition, and medicinal purposes. They are usually collected from the wild and sometimes grown in the vicinity of the forests and the dwelling...
Enrichment is essential for the welfare of many zoo-housed animals, yet the value of enrichment is not well understood for all taxa. As an intelligent, long-lived species, the southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) is a good model for enrich...
Despite increasing studies focusing on the visitor experience in zoological collections, minimal attention has been paid to visitor activity when driving through safari parks. The dwell time of visitors at exhibits within a traditional zoo setting ha...
Marine mammals, now more than ever, are exposed to environmental and anthropogenic stressors. A better understanding of stress physiology in marine mammals is warranted in order to assist in conservation efforts. This study screened gene expression p...
To explore the potential macroscopic tissue effects of select remote biopsy tools to common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), carcasses were darted and their traumatic effects on the anatomy in target and non-target areas of the body were des...
The modern zoo has been associated with two major behavioral welfare advances: (a) the use of training to increase voluntary husbandry care, and (b) the implementation of environmental enrichment to promote naturalistic behaviors. Both practices have...
No comprehensive assessment of the populations of big cats in federally regulated facilities in the United States is currently available. Concerns about big cat use are increasingly of strong public interest and the lack of data about their number an...
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