Auditory Enrichment for Captive Carnivores

Animals kept in ex-situ conservation sites like zoos, serve as insurance populations for their wild conspecifics, facilitating many roles such as educating the public and creating a population that can eventually be reintroduced. Where natural behaviours are unable to be performed, stress-related behaviours arise, such as stereotypic behaviours. Enrichment serves the purpose of reducing stereotypic behaviours and encouraging species-typical behaviours. This study looks into the effectiveness of different forms of enrichment (environmental, food, olfactory and auditory) on different captive carnivores, and whether the novel form of auditory enrichment is beneficial in captive felids. Sound enrichment was put into place for 15 days after a baseline period of 15 days, recording the duration and frequency of behaviours (Rest, locomotion, standing, grooming, vocalisation, and pacing, a stereotypical behaviour). A meta-analysis was also conducted to look into the effect of different types of enrichment for different carnivores on stereotypical behaviour. The results show that there is a non-significant trend in decreasing the identified stereotypic behaviour of pacing in captive felids with the implementation of auditory enrichment. This result, whilst non-significant, is supported by results from the meta-analysis showing that enrichment is more effective in solitary species than social species, and that within felids, all forms of enrichment are equally effective. Thus, highlighting the potential of a novel form of auditory enrichment which can be easily implemented by zoos. Enrichment as a whole has different levels of effectiveness of different types of carnivores, and different forms of enrichment have no significant difference in effectiveness within felids. Further work should focus on a formal comparative assessment of different types of enrichment.