Abstract:
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.
摘要:
动物园饲养的动物经常暴露于新形式的环境富集中,使它们的生活变得难以预测。然而,提供新的富集可能会产生不可预测的影响。我们评估了两种富集制度的有效性:(1)仅提供新的富集-“新奇”和(2)仅熟悉的富集-“熟悉”。“在这个案例研究中,使用活动预算分析和新对象测试评估富集功效。受试者是两种局灶性动物:金jack狼(Canisaureus)和欧洲r(Melesmeles)。我们的结果表明,两种评估方法对动物的福利提供了相似的结论。“熟悉”处理显着增加了jack狼活动预算中的活动并减少了异常行为,她在基线小说对象测试中避免了新颖的对象。新奇的处理导致了狼在护城河而不是主围栏中度过的时间的增长,回避和异常行为的增加。相比之下,在基线新对象测试中,the表现出高强度的探索行为,这两个政权都导致the的活动预算增加。我们建议一个稳定的,但是复杂的浓缩可以成为增加动物福利的有效有力工具,但是它的功效取决于单个动物的新颖性偏好。一种新颖的物体测试可以成为评估个体动物新奇偏好的快速工具,这些信息可能有助于为单个动物选择最佳的富集方案。