Maintaining Behavioural Diversity in Captivity for Conservation: Natural Behaviour Management

By L. A. Rabin. Animal Welfare, 2003

102 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Behavioural management in zoos is often practiced within the confines of environmental enrichment, a well-known method which attempts to increase the welfare of captive animals. For the successful conservation and reintroduction of threatened or endangered species, however, it is also important to manage behaviour in such a way as to maintain behavioural diversity. The development of natural behaviour management (NBM) programs is advocated in this paper. These programs will act to maintain behavioural diversity in captivity and will encourage behaviour to be displayed in appropriate contexts through exposure of captive animals to naturalistic stimuli. The importance of developing appropriate antipredator and predation behaviours will be discussed in order to demonstrate how NBM strategies differ from, and can even conflict with, environmental enrichment strategies undertaken for welfare reasons.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Small Animals

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8972e1d5bc1d0585363bd76fbe509f50ebc2c4e1

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Small Animals

Citations in the corpus

Exposure to variable spatial information in the early rearing environment generates asymmetries in social interactions in cod (Gadus morhua) (2005, unknown): “…referred to as environmental enrichment, can increase both behavioural and neuronal plasticity, improve cognitive performance, and that together these ultimately improve the survival chances of the re-introduced species (Hunter et al. 2002; Kempermann et al. 2002; Bredy et al. 2003; Rabin 2003).”
Enrichment promotes learning in fish (2010, background): “In mammals and birds, complex environments stimulate the development of neural tissue, cognitive performance and flexible behaviour (Hunter et al. 2002, Kempermann et al. 2002, Bredy et al. 2003, Rabin 2003).”
The effects of captive experience on reintroduction survival in carnivores: A review and analysis (2008, background): “This evidence suggests that captivity negatively influences animals’ capabilities to survive, and can result in a lack of appropriate ‘wild’ type behaviours (Rabin, 2003).”
Sources of stress in captivity (2007, background): “In essence, intelligentlymanaged zoological gardens attempt to preserve species-typical behavior (Markowitz, 1997; Rabin, 2003).”
The need to understand the behaviour of fish reared for mariculture or restocking (2006, background): “…mammals has already demonstrated that increasing complexity of the captive environment increases both behavioural and neuronal plasticity, improves cognitive performance, and increases survival of reintroduced species (Hunter et al., 2002; Kempermann et al., 2002; Bredy et al., 2003; Rabin, 2003).”