ZooChat Journal Club

A new paper has been published about the creation and usage of a new elephant behavioural welfare assessment tool, for studying and improving the welfare of captive elephants. The research took place at ZSL Whipsnade, Knowsley Safari Park, Chester Zoo, Colchester Zoo and Twycross Zoo. The assessment tool is questionnaire-style and would take keepers no more than an hour to complete, without the need for specialist training or facilities. The tool contains a list of behaviours which offer an indication on the animal's welfare.

An article about the new research is included below:
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-welfare-tool-elephants-human.html

The open-access paper is also included here:
Development of a behavioural welfare assessment tool for routine use with captive elephants

 

I have just seen this recently-published paper that has found that data from zoos and aquariums could have huge positive impacts on filling in data gaps on threatened species. By recording demographic information such as fertility, survival rates, litter/clutch sizes and maximum lifespan, conservation can be better informed. Among other things, the study found that the availability of life tables in a total of 32,144 known species of tetrapod (mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian) could be increased from 613 species using field-based data to 4,699 species, an almost eightfold gain.

The paper itself is included below:
Data gaps and opportunities for comparative and conservation biology

An article about the research is included below:
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-zoos-...8G9Xn5nmcvX2S2lEv5qnAe-f58zUqDnYhZKqhpOudNXSg

 

Something controversial: a new review arguing orcas can't thrive in captivity. ZooChatters may recognise the lead author, Lori Marino, as a prominent critic of marine parks. Despite some dubious claims and sources, this was peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

The Harmful Effects of Captivity and Chronic Stress on the Well-being of Orcas (Orcinus orca) - ScienceDirect

A worldwide zoo-led empirical study on cetacean welfare is also underway, one of the largest research projects in zoo history. If I recall correctly, results should be available next year.

 

I have now read the study linked here and I want to say I am sceptical about keeping Orca in captivity. I do not think that under the current circumstances Orca husbandry is optimal, mostly because tank size is far too small and founder populations are minimal as well. Given the gigantic costs that would actually be needed for in my eyes good Orca husbandry, that money is better spent elsewhere.


I am however critical of this study and surprised they got it published. Having a look at the author list, there is only 1 out of 6 co-authors who is a scientist at a university and she is part of the department of internal medicine (which does come in handy with all the theoretical background in this paper). The other authors are people who are known to be outspoken critics of Orcas in captivity. This already shows in the introduction, which is written in an extremely unscientific and biased way. They also do not provide a complete picture of the literature and ignore key information in a publication they cite, namely Robeck et al. 2015. The authors state that by every appropriate metric orcas do not fare as well as their free-ranging counterparts. Although Robeck et al. (2015) indeed find that Sea World Orca give birth earlier than wild counterparts (not sure whether that is relevant here), calf survival rate is higher in captive than in wild orca and median and average life expectancy are also at least at high or higher in captivity compared to the wild. They conclude by citing that “Our findings provide evidence for the similarity in life-history parameters of known-age animals from captive and free-ranging killer whale populations” which is the opposite as how they are cited…. Later in the article they try to disprove part of the findings of Robeck et al. (2015), but they do not show how this would have affected the findings of that study, if at all….


They also do not cite any research for some of their key statements, including that Gastric ulceration (a major cause of death in captive Orca) is often caused by prolonged stress. Another key point for which they do not present any evidence is the following:

By contrast, wild-caught orcas in captive facilities have been removed from the ocean as young calves, sometimes as early as one year of age, resulting in an abrupt severing of the strong maternal and family bonds upon which they fundamentally depend for their health, well-being and proper development. Captive-born orcas—who account for most of the orcas in captivity in the US today—have it no better, often experiencing insults to their social well-being from the moment they are born into an unnatural, and frequently unhealthy, social environment.


Where the authors do have a point is that intraspecific aggression in Orca and number of humans killed by Orca are much higher in captivity than in the wild. They ignore that there is a sampling bias, because captive Orca are much easier to observe, but the almost complete lack of such observations in the wild is certainly noteworthy. They link these fatalities to severe constraints in space, but there is no evidence to underpin this claim. Even though it is likely as Orca enclosures are extremely bare mostly, so there is limited opportunity to go out of each others way and the reasoning sounds quite reasonable.

It is also true that more captive Orca have tooth problems in captivity. They also have a point with criticizing Loro Parque for how they built up their Orca group, solely consisting of youngsters taken from their mothers too early. This has apparently resulted in a dysfunctional group.

Overall they do however mainly present circumstantial evidence and not conclusive evidence to prove their point. They do outline several errors that currently being made in Orca husbandry (e.g. social structures, enclosure size, mental stimuli, noise). Getting hard evidence to prove whether Orca are unsuited for captivity would be extremely hard to get. Not only would parks keeping Orca be probably quite unwilling to participate, getting hard evidence for how an animal actually feels and by what it is caused is extremely hard… I am looking forward to the study that should come out next year!

The mistake that they do make is stating that Orca in general are not suited for captivity. Even without presenting the hard evidence for these statements. that does however not mean that Orca cannot be kept successfully in captivity (theoretically). In a way it relates to how Great apes were kept 40-50 years ago. This also took place in unsuitable enclosures, with unnatural social structures, which led to not very well functioning Great apes (low breeding results, lots of handraised animals). Pioneers like Aspinall, Mager and Van Hooff have however shown a way forward and currently husbandry practices are much better and show that these animals can do very well in captivity under the right circumstances. I personally think that for Orca this is not financially viable nor desirable.

 

@lintworm: I agree and was also surprised the paper was published in this form. The reviewers should have insisted on proper references, removing unsubstantiated assertions, and toned down the language. Some points are nonetheless valid (e.g. the link between range size and welfare in captivity), but I'm unconvinced this is any more than a suggestion for orcas. Given such research gaps, both sides should be less bullish.

 

I saw this paper recently about how the biodiversity crisis could be partially addressed by increased collaboration between large carnivore conservation and zoos, as zoos create ideal conditions for the development of care towards nature, pro-environmental behaviours and long-term connections between visitors and carnivores.

An article about the research paper is included below:
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-large-carnivores-zoosessential-biodiversity.html

The actual paper is included here:
Large carnivores and zoos as catalysts for engaging the public in the protection of biodiversity

 

A paper has recently been published about what drives zoo attendance and how that footfall can impact conservation. Among the main findings were zoos with lots of animals, lots of different species (particularly mammals) and with large animals (such as elephants, tigers and pandas) attract higher numbers of visitors.

The research found that rather than a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, zoos can also attract visitors in other ways, including by housing unusual species. Ultimately higher numbers of visitors led to zoos contributing more to conservation activity in the wild.

Zoo size was found to have no impact (although smaller zoos can house fewer species, and fewer large animals) and zoos closer to large population centres received greater attendance.

An article about the research is included here:
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-size-...CFb28U1UrH18DpUXwS2IK3Lj0rjzq8yFpAn60LZb5ZrEo

The paper itself is available open-access on the link below:
A system wide approach to managing zoo collections for visitor attendance and in situ conservation

 

What an interesting paper! The thing I found most notable was that number of threatened species had little to no effect on attendance; that somewhat challenges the belief that zoos with more threatened species are contributing more to conservation or education than zoos that don't... not that keeping more threatened species doesn't already have existing merit.

 

Very interesting paper! Hopefully we see more studies using data to improve zoo world.

Quick thoughts:
This paper puts to rest an idea sometimes said, that zoos should put more money to conservation instead of showing popular species. The two are correlated not a trade-off.

I hope another paper shows what drives zoo visitors interest in nature and conservation. It is another important function of zoos, but was never quantified before.

Some German zoos believe that zoo attendance is driven mostly by few particular species: apes or monkeys, bears, camels, dolphins or pinnipeds, mega-herbivores (elephants, giraffe, common hippos, rhinos) and big cats. I wonder if the data already gathered in this paper could be used to verify it?

I wonder how conclusions of this paper could be watered down by specialist zoos, e.g. bird parks, aquaria, dolphinaria, which have very skewed species?

 

This is a great study, reading the news article I was already hoping they would be using a Structural Equation Modeling approach and they used one . A note of caution is that the results are largely based on correlations, validated mostly by a priori hypotheses. So it might be difficult to validate the direction of some of the relationships. They also only used population within 10 km as an indication, not a larger area, and they ignored tourism in the area, so there might be a way to improve the study.

Based on the results: having relatively large animals does increase your attendance, but having more animals is more important and having more people living closeby also has a larger influence on attendance than having large species. So this would mean that species numbers are more important than just having the ABC's. It should be noted however that their analysis did not allow for an hypothesis where only zoos with high attendance could afford to have more species.

All their data and analysis code is freely available online, so I might have a look at it (and play with it myself).

 

I just saw this 2019 paper earlier today and thought I would share it here.

Captive snakes are often kept in small enclosures that prevent the occupants from adopting a straight-line body posture - this is especially prevalent in the commercial, hobby and pet sectors but zoos and other such facilities also commonly maintain at least some species under such conditions.
Part of this study involved observing 65 individual snakes for one-hour durations - the study recorded that over the hour 37% of the observed snakes assumed straight or near-straight posture (45% of the 31 snake species assumed such postures).

The research infers that snakes, even so-called sedentary species, utilise significant space as part of their normal lifestyles and conclude that future policies for snake husbandry requires a shift toward recognising the greater spatial needs of these reptiles.

The full research paper can be found here:
Spatial considerations for captive snakes - ScienceDirect

 

I have seen this recent research that I thought might be of interest.

A pilot study carried out at Adelaide Zoo by the University of South Australia has developed a new way to undertake basic animal health checks using a digital camera.

In the pilot, nine species of animal (giant panda, African lion, Sumatran tiger, orangutan, Hamadryas baboon, koala, red kangaroo, alpaca and little blue penguin) were filmed for three minutes from distances of up to forty metres away on tripod-mounted digital cameras. These cameras picked up chest movements that indicate breathing and heart rates. Until now, monitoring the vital signs of animals has often involved specialised equipment and using it has usually required anaesthesia.

While the scientists do state that the technique needs refining and more validation, it does show that zoo animals can be monitored remotely for signs of poor health, allowing for earlier detection of illnesses and fewer unconscious trips to the vet.

An article about the research is included here:
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-digital-cameras-basic-health-zoo.html

The pilot study is included as open access here:
A Pilot Study for Estimating the Cardiopulmonary Signals of Diverse Exotic Animals Using a Digital Camera

 

I have just noticed this recently-published paper (although it is still in early view and only the abstract is viewable). This study aims to define a novel form of species surrogacy where non-threatened animals held in zoological collections can be used as a flagship for a related threatened species that is morphologically similar but not otherwise represented in zoos.

The abstract of this paper can be viewed in the link below:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi...kD2ISlMJNaIvxLIfmyhFyKATUyQr9gO30KijZbWUCcglg

 

I have just seen this recently-published paper, which looks at the potential for using wild birds to inform the care of captive ones and vice versa. Some examples of the ways that in-situ and ex-situ conservation can share information include:

- Using information from natural habitats to design enclosures that encourage breeding in hornbills; also designing and funding the placement of nest boxes to enhance the quality of hornbill breeding habitat
- Collecting nest information from Pohnpei kingfishers to inform breeding of the extinct-in-the-wild Guam kingfisher; the results found that these birds tended to breed at higher temperatures than they were being kept at in zoos and prompted a change in husbandry
- Using proxy species in captivity to raise awareness of the conservation of a wild species, with the example given being the commonly-kept Chilean flamingo as a proxy for the vulnerable, rarely-kept Andean flamingo

An article about the research can be found here:
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-birds-natural-habits-captive.html

The full research paper is included below:
Evidence for Aviculture: Identifying Research Needs to Advance the Role of Ex Situ Bird Populations in Conservation Initiatives and Collection Planning

 

A study has recently been published that examines the responses of animals to zoo closures as a result of Covid-19 shutdowns and their subsequent reopenings.

Meerkats, studied in three British zoos, performed more positive social interactions during reopening periods than during shutdowns. During closures, they used more of their enclosure, performed less alert behaviour and engaged in more environmental interaction.

African penguins, studied in a single South African institution, showed no difference in behaviour between closure and reopening periods.

An article about the research is included here:
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-scientists-meerkats-response-zoo-visitors.html

The full paper is included here:
Understanding impacts of zoo visitors: Quantifying behavioural changes of two popular zoo species during COVID-19 closures - ScienceDirect

 

This is an interesting idea for a thread hope it becomes more active.

 

Two-shot images (a picture containing a person and an animal together) are widely-used in zoo advertisment and social media but there are concerns it may inadvertently promote the illegal wildlife trade.

To study if this is true, 531 zoo visitors were asked whether their attitudes or willingness to donate altered depending on whether they viewed a two-shot image set in a photo-prop setting (associated with negative welfare), a zoo or in the wild.

The results found that generally, all images were viewed positively regardless of context. Zoo images received more comments with concern to animal welfare than the other two, although numbers were relatively low. This indicates a lack of awareness about the problems of photo-prop settings and misconceptions about modern zoo welfare, thus reflecting the need for more education in these areas.

Two-shot images in zoos elicited significantly higher willingness to donate than two-shot images in the wild or in photo-prop settings or when the animal was pictured alone. This suggests zoo-based images may be more effective for conservation campaigns than traditional images of animals in their environment. Furthermore, images of a uniformed zookeeper with an animal do not appear to increase desire for exotic pet ownership. This indicates these images can be used in zoo advertising with minimal negative consequences.

The full paper can be found here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi..._4Jpap-bjQ2etnNlsTTUzWh5_Ksux_ishVLt4AhEk9u78

 

Research has recently been published showing the effects of visitor numbers on visibility of amphibians, using the COVID-19 lockdown for research purposes.

The research took place at Slimbridge WWT and studied how visible six amphibian species (common frog, common toad, smooth newt, pool frog, golden mantella and golden poison-dart frog) were during stages of complete lockdown, when a higher number of staff returned to the site and when the site was reopened completely to the public.

The results were variable among the different species, with the brightly coloured toxic species less likely to be affected by visitor numbers than camouflaged species. For example, common toads were most likely to be visible during the highest level of lockdown and sightings significantly decreased when more staff returned. These findings could help inform enclosure design, collection planning and husbandry.

The abstract for this paper can be found here:
Bold Frogs or Shy Toads? How Did the COVID-19 Closure of Zoological Organisations Affect Amphibian Activity?

An article about the research is included below:
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-lockdown-opportunity-zoo-animal-behavior.html

 

Although the results mostly have implications for wildlife conservation, this research was carried out in a zoo and I found very interesting, so will post it here.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is being increasingly used to monitor species presence in wild situations, but it is not known how well some methods work. To test the effectiveness of airborne eDNA collection on species identification, the researchers placed three air filters at different sites of Copenhagen Zoo and examined what eDNA was recorded in them.

The first filter was sited in a stable for okapi and red forest duikers. As well as successfully detecting both of these species, the apparatus also recorded thirteen birds and mammals kept in neighbouring enclosures elsewhere in the southern section of the zoo, one zoo species from the northern section of the zoo, two wild pests (brown rat and house mouse), of which one is also kept at the zoo and used as feed (the mouse), two wild or domestic non-zoo species known to occur in or around the zoo (water vole and domestic dog) and two fish used as animal feed (salmon and smelt).

The second filter was located in an open-air location close to several outdoor mammal and bird enclosures in the southern section of the zoo. Of the thirty-five bird and mammal species with access to an outdoor enclosure in the southern section, twenty-one were recorded. Also identified was one animal from the northern section of the zoo, three wild pests (of which two are also used as feed), four wild or domestic non-zoo species known to occur in or around the zoo and one fish species used as feed.

The third filter was located in the rainforest section of the zoo's Tropical House. Twenty-nine species were detected in total, including nine of the twenty-four vertebrates inside the house itself (one of these, the Dumeril's ground boa, is kept in a terrarium). In addition, five species from within the Tropical House but away from the rainforest section were detected, four species used as feed, seven species from outside the Tropical House, the domestic cat and dog and two rodent pests.

The eDNA was so effective that it even managed to allow identification of individual animals - two different ostriches, five white rhinos, twenty-five helmeted guineafowl and forty-seven Javan sparrows were identified.

The findings show that monitoring biodiversity using airborne eDNA is possible. The full article is included here:
DEFINE_ME
Title: Airborne environmental DNA for terrestrial vertebrate community monitoring

A similar study was also done recently at Hamerton Zoo, which also found that while eDNA is most concentrated to species close to the filters, it can carry a distance from the enclosure, supporting the findings of the Copenhagen study. This paper can be found here:
DEFINE_ME
Title: Measuring biodiversity from DNA in the air

A news article about both bits of research is included here:
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-zoo-air-dna-animals.html

 

Really interesting, never knew that Aardvarks could resist those temperatures and that there's an overall weight problem with them, thanks for sharing!