Circadian activity patterns and nocturnal resting sites of Eurasian badgers (Meles meles L.) in a rural area of western Switzerland

San, Emmanuel Do Linh; Ferrari, Nicola; Weber, Jean-Marc

doi:10.5962/bhl.part.117593

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…An active animal in the enclosure increases the level of interest for visitors, but such activity can also reflect a certain level of anxiety in the animal. It is known that in nature a wild badger is spent about 40% of daytime underground (Do Linh San et al, 2010), and the fact that during the Novelty phase the male began to spend only 12% of time in the shelter is rather a negative indicator.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In search of the optimal enrichment program for zoo‐housed animals

Podturkin¹

2021

Zoo Biology

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Zoo‐housed animals are regularly exposed to new forms of environmental enrichment to make their lives less predictable. However, providing new enrichment can have unpredictable effects. We evaluated the effectiveness of two enrichment regimes: (1) providing only new enrichments – “Novelty” and (2) only familiar enrichments – “Familiar.” In this case study, enrichment efficacy was assessed using activity budget analysis and novel object tests. The subjects were two focal animals: the golden jackal (Canis aureus) and the European badger (Meles meles). Our results suggest that both assessment methods provided similar conclusions about the animal's welfare. The “Familiar” treatment significantly increased activity and decreased abnormal behavior in the jackal's activity budget, who avoided novel objects in her baseline novel object test. The Novelty treatment resulted in the growth of time the jackal spent in the moat instead of the main enclosure, and an increase in avoidance and abnormal behaviors. In contrast, the badger demonstrated a high intensity of exploratory behavior in the baseline novel object test, and both regimes led to an increase in the activity budget of the badger. We propose that a stable, but complex enrichment can be an effective robust tool to increase animal welfare, but its efficacy depends on the novelty preference of individual animals. A novel object test can be a rapid tool to assess individual animals' novelty preferences, and this information may help to choose optimal enrichment regimes for individual animals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%