Getting Started
 The overall goal of enrichment is typically to encourage species-appropriate behaviors, give animals some choices within their environment, or to prevent/reduce the occurrence of stereotypic behaviors – all to ensure that the animals experience good welfare. A first step (Setting Goals) involves using knowledge of the animal's natural and individual history to generate ideas about behaviors that we might want to encourage in the animal's current enclosure (both on exhibit and in holding). At Disney’s Animal Programs, we developed a series of questions meant to help in the development of an enrichment plan for a particular species, or individual animals, by identifying the specific needs of the animals and enrichment goals to meet those needs.
This series of questions is meant to provide information on:
- Natural history of the species
- What is this species’ wild habitat (e.g., desert, tropical rainforest, cover, concealment/camouflage options, temperature ranges)?
- What are some self-maintenance/comfort behaviors (e.g., preening, grooming, bathing, dust-bathing, wallowing, sunning, panting)?
- When is it most active (diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular)?
- What are its primary sensory modalities (e.g., sight, smell, sound) for communicating with conspecifics, detecting predators and for finding food, mates, or other social partners?
- What is the social structure of this species (e.g., solitary, dyads, "harem," colonial, leks, polyandry)?
- What is the average/typical group size?
- What is the animal’s diet type (e.g., omnivore, carnivore, herbivore, nectivore) in the wild?
- What does the animal feed on in the wild?
- What behaviors does it use to locate and procure the different types of food it needs?
- Does it use tools to obtain food? Store/cache food?
- Individual history of the animal for which the enrichment plan is being developed
- Does this animal have any behavioral problems (e.g., fearful/aggressive to humans, stereotypy, feather plucking)?
- Husbandry/management constraints
- "We’d like to feed the zebras hay on exhibit throughout the day, but if we do so, the zebras may not shift into the barn at night."
Next Steps In Setting Goals
Given these considerations (natural history, individual history, and current exhibit), what behaviors should we attempt to encourage? Discourage?  Discussions should also include a review of published information on enrichment for the species/group under review. Good references include: Zoo Biology, Shape of Enrichment, Animal Keepers' Forum, Ratel, International Zoo Yearbook, International Zoo News, Enrichment Listserv, the Fort Worth Zoo sponsored web-site ‘www.enrichmentonline.org’. See References for details. At Disney’s Animal Programs, working in teams (e.g., Primate team, Aviary team, Elephant team, etc.) we’ve found that a useful way to summarize the information from these goal setting questions is for the team to review the answers to approximately five questions at a time, then stop and ask:
- Are there any behaviors discussed that we want to encourage/discourage (e.g., wallowing in rhinos)?
- How will we provide the opportunity and the motivation to encourage/discourage this behavior (e.g., “let’s create a wallow for the rhinos to promote species-appropriate wallowing”)?
Below are some examples of goal setting questions and answers and enrichment goal development tools that can assist in summarizing the information from the goal-setting questions. The completed examples are from a goal-setting review session for golden-breasted starlings at
Disney’s Animal Programs.
 |
|
 |
In terms of encouraging specific behaviors through enrichment, two things are necessary for a chosen behavior to be elicited: opportunity and motivation. To encourage natural behaviors, opportunity could include providing exhibit elements such as nesting material, leaf litter, water for bathing, appropriate shoreline for feeding, presentation of flying/crawling/burrowing insects, playback of a conspecific vocalization, or enough open space to fly/display. It’s fairly easy to provide birds many opportunities to feed, bathe, nest, fly, perch in plain sight, etc. However, if the appropriate motivation does not exist, the bird will usually choose not to exhibit that behavior. For example, a pool might be provided for bathing, but if that pool is too close to the visitor walkway, the birds are unlikely to use it for its intended purpose because of competing motivation: its motivation to bathe versus its motivation to stay away from visitors. A mister set to go off at 8am may not be used at that hour, either because it’s too cold for birds to be motivated to bathe, or because 8am is not a species-appropriate time for bathing. With many enrichment initiatives, the birds may need to learn to use the devices. If looking for insects hidden under leaf litter is not part of a bird’s typical feeding regime, keepers may need to start with live insects in a food bowl, then live insects on the floor of the enclosure, then insects hidden in leaf litter.
Prioritizing Behaviors
Given the multitude of enrichment ideas that can be developed for a particular species, how does one prioritize the list of ideas? We suggest that two components can assist in this prioritization: animal needs and feasibility.
Animal needs include a fairly subjective assessment of how  "important" a behavioral opportunity is to a particular species. These needs are based on the motivations for animals to perform various behaviors, and may be different for different individuals at different times of the year. Providing nesting materials for birds that build nests on a seasonal basis would be a priority during breeding season, but less so at other times of the year. Providing den sites for small cats would be something that is important all year round. Information about motivation and animal needs can be found in the scientific literature for many species, as well as in the collective knowledge of the animal care staff.
Feasibility is simply an assessment of existing or potential resources or management constraints that may limit the ability to implement the enrichment or training. For example, building a naturalistic "termite mound" that released insects might be cost prohibitive; however, building a functional insect feeder out of PVC pipe may not be cost prohibitive. Training birds to come to a lower perch might increase visibility to the visitors in a walk-through aviary, but might also put the birds at risk.
The end result of this review is to generate a list of high priority, feasible initiatives. Again, Table 1 is meant to assist with this process [from Sevenich MacPhee & Mellen, 2000b].
Conclusion of Goal Setting
The conclusion of the Setting Goals process is a potential list of enrichment initiatives, with each initiative being associated with a specific behavioral goal or goals. In certain cases, enrichment initiatives may promote more than one species-appropriate behavior. For example, hay may promote foraging and/or nesting. The behavioral goals that are chosen should be those identified from going through the natural and individual histories of the animals. One of the benefits of having a goal associated with every enrichment initiative is in being able to evaluate the success of the enrichment initiative if/when it is provided to the animals. Without a pre-conceived notion of how the animal will interact with an enrichment initiative, it is very difficult to determine whether or not it was successful. However, since an initiative that was designed to promote foraging has this goal associated with it, the question “did it promote foraging?” can be asked. Identifying ways to answer this and other questions will be addressed in the Documenting and Evaluating components of the SPIDER framework. It is worth bearing in mind that questions concerning the effectiveness of enrichment (i.e., did the enrichment initiative encourage the goal behavior?) should be thought about even during the Setting Goals phase.
|
