Behavior patterns of 9 mammals in the zoo : The comparison among species, and different environments

Abstract

In recent years, environmental enrichment is becoming imperative at zoos. A goal of the environmental enrichment of zoo environments is to make the behavioral repertoire and activity budgets of captive animals as close to those of their wild counterparts as possible. However, since there are few studies concerning zoo animal behavior, it is first necessary to elucidate the differences of behavior between wild and captive animals. This study aimed to describe the behavioral patterns of nine mammalian species (wallaby, lion, wolf, bear, elephant, zebra, deers, Japanese macaque, chimpanzee) reared at three zoos in '95 and '96 using the focal animal sampling method. The differences of animal behavior between the captivity and the wild were examined. The results show that zoo animals have a much simpler repertoire and also exhibited extremely different activity budgets compared with wild counterparts. This was especially the case in feeding behavior. It is concluded that modification of feeding conditions should be one of the high priority targets in zoo environmental enrichment projects.