The Effect of Behind-The-Scenes Encounters and Interactive Presentations on the Welfare of Captive Servals (Leptailurus serval)

Abstract

The serval (Leptailurus serval) is a small African felid that is well represented in zoos and often serves as an animal ambassador in encounter programs with zoo visitors. The impact on serval welfare in relation to such programs has not been investigated to date, and the aim of this study was to assess short-term welfare effects of varying levels of visitor interaction in two captive servals. Weekly blocks of four different treatments were imposed three times on each animal over 12 weeks, and the treatments involved (1) Presentations (serval undertaking a routine training session in a designated presentation space, typically attracting high visitor numbers), (2) Behind-the-scenes (BTS, a close encounter allowing a small group of visitors to interact closely with the cat in its enclosure), (3) Presentations and BTS combined, and (4) No visitor interaction. Serval activity budgets as well as behavioural diversity were created from behaviours observed from Close Circuit Television (CCTV) footage during four daily recording sessions per animal over three consecutive days per treatment, using instantaneous scan sampling every 60 s. Individual faecal samples were collected daily to monitor changes in faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM) concentration. Results indicate that the mean number of scans with stereotypic pacing was significantly reduced (p = 0.01) during Treatments 1 and 3, when cats participated in presentations only, or the two activities combined. Conversely, a significant reduction in behavioural diversity (p < 0.001) was observed when cats participated in Treatment 3, i.e., cats expressed fewer behaviours when interaction with visitors was more frequent. FGM concentrations did not vary significantly with treatment (p > 0.05). Given the reduction in stereotypic pacing, these findings suggest that involvement in an encounter program appears to exert an overall positive short-term welfare effect on the individual servals in this study. Although a reduction in behavioural diversity was not considered a negative welfare effect in the short term, potential long-term negative welfare effects resulting from a more frequent encounter program could not be ruled out in the present study.

Widespread Behavioral Responses by Mammals and Fish to Zoo Visitors Highlight Differences between Individual Animals

“…When orangutans were given a preference test, they did not show aversion to the public viewing area [ 56 ]. When treatments were applied that varied in the extent of interactions that servals ( Leptailurus serval ) had with zoo visitors, the overall decrease in stereotypic pacing led to the conclusion that some visitor-encounter programs may have a short-term positive benefit for the animals [ 57 ]. Furthermore, the relationship between variables (e.g., visitor abundance, zoo animal behavior) is not necessarily causal: an increase in certain behaviors may attract zoo visitors [ 23 ].…”

Conservation Education: Are Zoo Animals Effective Ambassadors and Is There Any Cost to Their Welfare?

“…The doctoral theses went into substantially more detail than any of the published literature, typically investigating a larger sample, considering multiple, separate investigations to evaluate welfare or education [32,33,37] or making detailed observations over an extended time period [34]. Parts of these doctoral theses have been published and have been considered in the main analysis [38,42,52]; these aspects were, therefore, excluded from our analysis of the 'other' literature.…”

“…Of the 13 peer-reviewed welfare studies, nine used behavioural observations and five tested physiological measures (Table 3). Four peer-reviewed studies used combined physiological and behavioural measures of welfare [28,29,38,52]. All of the four welfare-focused 'other' studies reported mixed welfare impacts.…”

“…The peer-reviewed study by Acaralp-Rehnberg et al [38], despite having aspects of rigour in the study design (pre-post-testing, control groups and a mix of physiological and behavioural welfare measures), involved a very small sample (n = 2 servals Leptailurus serval). Whilst they were unable to measure the behaviour of the animals during the encounter due to a lack of CCTV in the presentation area, it is unlikely that observing this period would have revealed much about serval welfare since the animals were performing trained behaviours.…”

“…Red squares = education studies; blue circles = welfare studies; green triangles = both education and welfare. Peer reviewed journal articles were plotted [28][29][30][31]38,[41][42][43][44][45][47][48][49][51][52][53][57][58][59].…”