Zoos and Environmental Enrichment

  • Environmental/Behavioral Enrichment

    • A dynamic process for enhancing key elements of animal living spaces in diverse and stimulating ways to address the animals' needs and to increase their choices and the opportunities to engage in species-appropriate behaviors, thus enhancing animal welfare and wellbeing

 

  • VERY Brief History of Enrichment

    • Heini Hediger (1950s Zoo Zurich) = first to emphasize behavioral needs of animals via "occupational therapy"

    • Hal Markowitz (1980s OR Zoo) = develops wide range of devices to keep zoo animals occupied and provide some elements of control

    • Behavioral Engineering = when the animal is required to express certain behaviors to earn an outcome

 

  • Initial Response to Enrichment

    • Some challenges and criticism concerning "non-natural" behaviors, anthropomorphism, and rates of behavior

    • Stimuli may be "unnatural" BUT subsequent behaviors are "natural" → 1999 AZA new accreditation guidelines - must provide evidence of enrichment programs

 

  • Enrichment Development Process

    • Enrichment must be purposeful and designed and implemented with a specific goal

 

  • What Objectives Enrichment Aims to Address

    • Physical Health and Fitness

      • Increase activity, improve development

    • Psychological Health

      • Mental stimulation, flexibility, problem-solving, coping

    • Behavioral Health

      • Reduce abnormal, increase appropriate, combat boredom

    • Daily Management Objectives

      • Shifting, social conflict, movement, destruction

 

  • SHAPE of Enrichment - 5 Categories

    • Social

    • Cognitive or Occupational

    • Physical/Habitat

    • Sensory

    • Food/Nutritional

 

  • Environmental Enrichment - Social

    • Providing species-appropriate opportunities for animals to engage in cooperative, investigative, and foraging behaviors with conspecifics, allospecifics, humans, or inanimate objects

 

  • Social Enrichment - Key Terms

    • Conspecifics = individuals belonging to the same species

    • Allospecifics = individuals of another species, genetically distinct and unable to interbreed

    • Interspecies Friendship = nonsexual bond formed between animals of different species

 

  • Environmental Enrichment - Cognitive

    • Providing opportunities for animals to engage in physically and mentally challenging activities - stimulates mental process and occupational drives

 

  • Environmental Enrichment - Physical

    • All the physical and environmental elements in an animal's space (e.g., substrates, water elements, pits, piles, rocks, temperature, etc.)

 

  • Physical Enrichment - Key Terms

    • Furniture = enrichment or items kept in living space > 24 hours

    • Visual Barriers = animals on either side cannot see one another

    • Visual Screens = animals can gain a sense of safety/being hidden while still able to see out

 

  • Environmental Enrichment - Sensory

    • Providing visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory stimuli for animals to experience and explore

 

  • Environmental Enrichment - Nutritional/Food

    • Increasing the amount of time and effort animals spend searching, acquiring, and processing their food

    • Contrafeeding = animals actively work for food in their living space even if freely available

 

  • Categories are not Mutually Exclusive

    • Most enrichment encompasses more than 1 category (typically 2+)

 

  • How to Evaluate the Success of Enrichment?

    • Reduces:

      • Stereotypic and abnormal behaviors

    • Increases:

      • Time and diversity of foraging

      • Diversity of space use

      • Play, exploration, and affiliative behavior

      • Problem solving

      • Species-appropriate behaviors

 

  • Formal Enrichment Assessments

    • Empirical studies with hypotheses, full ethograms, and statistical analyses

 

  • Informal Enrichment Assessments - EIR

    • Enrichment Interaction Rating (EIR) = level of engagement as time and intensity

    • 0 = no interaction

    • 1 = minimal interaction and/or low intensity

    • 2 = moderate interaction and/or increased intensity

    • 3 = high interaction and/or vigorous intensity

 

  • Informal Enrichment Assessments - BAR

    • Behavior Assessment Rating (BAR) = degree of meeting specific behavioral objectives