I came across an interesting article: Animals in zoos 'lonely' without visitors I think coronavirus lockdown is an interesting change to measure the true effect of visitors on zoo animals. Zoos could at least write down their one-off observations, because the article above is completely the opposite of the paradigm that zoo animals are stressed by visitors.
The Zoo Leipzig has a television series in form of a documentary, which gets broadcasted weekly and gets uploaded to YouTube aswell. There they describe the effects of missing visitors onto the environment and animals within the zoo, one example is, that the plants in the big tropical hall, the Gondwanaland, are kinda overgrowing the pathways for the visitors and buildings within the tropical house. The free roaming animals are also going on different spots, where they wouldn`t go normally, because of visitors occupying this spot. A lot of the animals are also way more interested in the people walking along the exhibit, for example if someone of the staff happens to walk by. Many other zoos often post currently more often on social media like Instagram, where they show these certain behaviors of animals.
I think particularly in the case of naturally curious and social animals they do miss the visitors in a way. Particularly groups like otters, primates, and parrots which frequently engage with visitors to the extent they can. It's enriching for them and keeps them busy. It would be interesting to do a study on how those animals react when visitors are again present and interacting with them.
I know at Denver Zoo there’s an Emu named Ralph who is very curious towards visitors and enjoyed having them around. In response to the lockdown the Zoo set up a sort of campaign for people to send in videos saying “Hi” to Ralph.
Couldn't agree more. I think mainly just a load of publicity rubbish. A few, e.g. Apes, might notice how quiet it is with no visitors, but care or actively miss them? Never.
