Abstract
Enrichment preference: integrating the animal’s point of view into welfare assessment.
Assessing the welfare of captive animals is a multidisciplinary task with important scientific, ethical, and legal ramifications. Beyond the absence of suffering, there is growing concern for positive welfare, which takes into the account the life experiences and psychological well-being of animals1,2. Environmental enrichment programs aim to increase positive welfare; however, they often produce unanticipated affects on behavioral and hormonal welfare indicators1,2,3. These inconsistencies may be resolved through preference testing1,3. My central hypothesis is that preferred enrichment practices correlate with standard behavioral and physiological indicators of positive welfare. I will explore the following questions using zoo-housed blue monkeys. 1.) What type of enrichment do monkeys prefer? I will assess the monkeys’ preference for three types of enrichment, (1) social (mixed-species contact), (2) structural (novel substrate material), and (3) foraging (puzzle feeders), by measuring the level of effort exhibited by monkeys (i.e. perform a trained task) to access each enrichment type1,3. 2.) How does exerting control over the environment impact welfare? I will use a combination of veterinary (disease incidence), behavioral (activity levels), and physiological (fecal stress hormone levels) welfare indicators and compare baseline to enrichment phase data to assess if environmental control increases positive welfare1,2. 3.) Finally, do the enrichment types differentially affect welfare indicators? To answer this question, I will compare the above indicators of welfare among the enrichment types and in relation to the preference data. This study takes a novel approach to both enrichment and welfare assessment by examining what best contributes to positive welfare from the animal’s point of view1.
1. Dawkins, M.S. 1998. Evolution and animal welfare. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 73(3), 305-328.
2. McCann, C., Buchanan-Smith, H., Farmer, K., Fitch-Snyder, H., Jones-Engle, L., Prescott, M., and Taylor, S. 2007. IPS international Guidelines for the Acquisition, Care and Breeding of Nonhuman Primates, Second edition. Captive Care Committee, International Primatological Society.
3. Mench, J.A. 1993. Assessing animal welfare: an overview. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 6(supp.2), 69-73.