scholarly journals Captive-rearing duration may be more important than environmental enrichment for enhancing turtle head-starting success

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasha Tetzlaff ◽  
Jinelle Sperry ◽  
Bruce Kingsburg ◽  
Brett DeGregorio

Raising captive animals past critical mortality stages for eventual release (head-starting) is a common conservation tactic. Counterintuitively, post-release survival can be low. Post-release behavior affecting survival could be influenced by captive-rearing duration and housing conditions. Practitioners have adopted environmental enrichment to promote natural behaviors during head-starting such as raising animals in naturalistic enclosures. Using 32 captive-born turtles (Terrapene carolina), half of which were raised in enriched enclosures, we employed a factorial design to explore how enrichment and rearing duration affected post-release growth, behavior, and survival. Six turtles in each treatment (enriched or unenriched) were head-started for nine months (cohort one). Ten turtles in each treatment were head-started for 21 months (cohort two). At the conclusion of captive-rearing, turtles in cohort two were overall larger than cohort one, but unenriched turtles were generally larger than enriched turtles within each cohort. Once released, enriched turtles grew faster than unenriched turtles in cohort two, but we otherwise found minimal evidence suggesting enrichment affected post-release survival or behavior. Our findings suggest attaining larger body sizes from longer captive-rearing periods to enable greater movement and alleviate susceptibility to predation (the primary cause of death) could be more effective than environmental enrichment alone in chelonian head-starting programs where substantial predation could hinder success.

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 973
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Zentall

The humane treatment of animals suggests that they should be housed in an environment that is rich in stimulation and allows for varied activities. However, even if one’s main concern is an accurate assessment of their learning and cognitive abilities, housing them in an enriched environment can have an important effect on the assessment of those abilities. Research has found that the development of the brain of animals is significantly affected by the environment in which they live. Not surprisingly, their ability to learn both simple and complex tasks is affected by even modest time spent in an enriched environment. In particular, animals that are housed in an enriched environment are less impulsive and make more optimal choices than animals housed in isolation. Even the way that they judge the passage of time is affected by their housing conditions. Some researchers have even suggested that exposing animals to an enriched environment can make them more “optimistic” in how they treat ambiguous stimuli. Whether that behavioral effect reflects the subtlety of differences in optimism/pessimism or something simpler, like differences in motivation, incentive, discriminability, or neophobia, it is clear that the conditions of housing can have an important effect on the learning and cognition of animals.


2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. KATSAROU (Α. ΚΑΤΣΑΡΟΥ) ◽  
A. TSIRONI (Α. ΤΣΙΡΩΝΗ) ◽  
M. SERAFETINIDOU (Μ. ΣΕΡΑΦΕΤΙΝΙΔΟΥ) ◽  
C. VOYAZAKI (Χ. ΒΟΓΙΑΤΖΑΚΗ) ◽  
V. BAUMANS ◽  
...  

Housing conditions and environmental enrichment of individually caged laboratory rabbits is of great importance for the welfare of the animals and the quality of the experimental results. In order to improve the design of existing environmental enrichment programs for laboratory rabbits, considerable knowledge of the behavioural needs of this species is necessary. Taking this into consideration, the aim of this study was to monitor and analyze the behaviour of juvenile and young adult rabbits in order to establish whether there are any age-dependent differences in grooming, rearing, sniffing, eating, drinking and gnawing. 12 NZW rabbits were divided into two groups: group A consisted of six 6-month-old rabbits (young adults) and group Β consisted of six 2-month-old rabbits (juvenile). All animals were already housed for more than twenty days under the same conditions in the animal facility. Both groups of rabbits were video-recorded between 06:00h - 18:00h for four consecutive days. The frequency of each behaviour was determined and compared in the two groups of rabbits from the video recordings. The frequencies of grooming, eating and gnawing in the young rabbits were significantly greater than those in the older rabbits (p<0.05). No statistical differences were found between the two groups for rearing, sniffing and drinking. From these results, we concluded that even small age differences should be taken into account when designing an environmental enrichment program for individually caged rabbits.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (10) ◽  
pp. 1365-1379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shashank Shukla ◽  
Joseph Favata ◽  
Vikas Srivastava ◽  
Sina Shahbazmohamadi ◽  
Anubhav Tripathi ◽  
...  

Diversity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasha Tetzlaff ◽  
Jinelle Sperry ◽  
Brett DeGregorio

Head-starting is a conservation strategy that entails releasing captive-reared animals into nature at sizes large enough to better resist post-release predation. However, efforts to maximize growth in captivity may jeopardize development of beneficial behaviors. Environmental enrichment can encourage natural behaviors before release but potentially comes with a tradeoff of reduced growth in complex enclosures. We compared growth and behavior of enriched and unenriched captive-born juvenile box turtles (Terrapene carolina). Enriched turtles grew slower than unenriched turtles during the first eight months in captivity, although growth rates did not differ between treatments from 9–20 months old. After five months post-hatching, unenriched turtles became and remained larger overall than enriched turtles. During two foraging tasks, unenriched turtles consumed more novel prey than enriched turtles. In a predator recognition test, eight-month-old enriched turtles avoided raccoon (Procyon lotor) urine more than unenriched turtles of the same age, but this difference was not apparent one year later. The odds of turtles emerging from a shelter did not differ between treatments regardless of age. Although our results suggest turtles raised in unenriched environments initially grew faster and obtained larger overall sizes than those in enriched conditions, tradeoffs with ecologically-relevant behaviors were either absent or conditional.


2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 506-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. S. Vidal ◽  
F. R. Guilherme ◽  
V. F. Silva ◽  
M. C. S. R. Faccio ◽  
M. M. Martins ◽  
...  

Abstract Captive animals exhibit stereotypic pacing in response to multiple causes, including the inability to escape from human contact. Environmental enrichment techniques can minimize pacing expression. By using an individual-based approach, we addressed whether the amount of time two males and a female jaguar (Panthera onca) devote to pacing varied with the number of visitors and tested the effectiveness of cinnamon and black pepper in reducing pacing. The amount of time that all jaguars engaged in pacing increased significantly with the number of visitors. Despite the difference between the males regarding age and housing conditions, both devoted significantly less time to pacing following the addition of both spices, which indicates their suitability as enrichment techniques. Mean time devoted to pacing among the treatments did not differ for the female. Our findings pointed out to the validity of individual-based approaches, as they can reveal how suitable olfactory stimuli are to minimizing stereotypies irrespective of particular traits.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 132-138
Author(s):  
Károly Bodnár ◽  
László Makra ◽  
Erika Skobrák Bodnár

In the last ten years a number of research were done and articles were published in order to improve or change the housing conditions of rabbits. These studies focus on the customer needs and changes in expectations based usually on animal welfare. During farm visits we found that the housing circumstances among those factors which are emphasized individually or jointly appeared in the everyday life of rabbit farming (for example: optimal micro-climate, cage floor space, type of floor, keeping mode, environmental enrichment, etc.). In our work we tried to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure. In many cases it is difficult to create perfect coherence with the ideas of animal rights, animal needs and economic interests of the farmers. The number of results and ideas for implementation of all the correct procedures is so great that it is certainly impossible to keep them a time and place in a single technology. Of course, if the changes are generated by the consumer demands, then the farmer has to adapt to expectations in order to keep the market (and sometimes ignoring some other aspects).


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Jing-Ying Liu ◽  
Wei-Jing Liao ◽  
Xiu-Ping Chen

Different housing conditions, including housing space and the physiological and social environment, may affect rodent behavior. Here, we examined the effects of different housing conditions on post-stroke angiogenesis and functional recovery to clarify the ambiguity about environmental enrichment and its components. Male rats in the model groups underwent right middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) followed by reperfusion. The MCAO rats were divided into four groups: the physical enrichment (PE) group, the social enrichment (SE) group, the combined physical and social enrichment (PSE) group and the ischemia/reperfusion + standard conditioning (IS) group. The rats in the sham surgery (SS) group were housed under standard conditions. In a set of behavioral tests, including the modified Neurological Severity Score (mNSS), rotarod test, and adhesive removal test, we demonstrated that the animals in the enriched condition groups exhibited significantly improved neurological functions compared to those in the standard housing group. Smaller infarction volumes were observed in the animals of the PSE group by MRI detection. The enriched conditions increased the microvessel density (MVD) in the ischemic boundary zone, as revealed by CD31 immunofluorescent staining. The immunochemical and q-PCR results further showed that environmental enrichment increased the expression levels of angiogenic factors after ischemia/reperfusion injury. Our data suggest that all three enrichment conditions promoted enhanced angiogenesis and functional recovery after ischemia/reperfusion injury compared to the standard housing, while only exposure to the combination of both physical and social enrichment yielded optimal benefits.


Aquaculture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 518 ◽  
pp. 734782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zonghang Zhang ◽  
Qingqing Bai ◽  
Xiuwen Xu ◽  
Haoyu Guo ◽  
Xiumei Zhang

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. e00797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasha J. Tetzlaff ◽  
Jinelle H. Sperry ◽  
Bruce A. Kingsbury ◽  
Brett A. DeGregorio

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caifang Wen ◽  
Ingrid van Dixhoorn ◽  
Dirkjan Schokker ◽  
Henri Woelders ◽  
Norbert Stockhofe-Zurwieden ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Conventional pig housing and management conditions are associated with gastrointestinal pathophysiology and disease susceptibility in early life. Developing new strategies to reduce both therapeutic and prophylactic antibiotic use is urgent for the sustainable swine production globally. To this end, housing methodology providing effective environmental enrichment could be a promising alternative approach to reduce antibiotic usage, as it has been proven to positively influence pig welfare and immune status and reduce susceptibility to infections. It is, however, poorly understood how this enriched housing affects systemic and local pulmonary immune status and gut microbiota colonization during early life. In the present study, we compared the effects of two housing conditions, i.e., conventional housing: (CH) versus enriched housing (EH), on immune status and gut microbiota from birth until 61 days of age. Results The expected benefits of enrichment on pig welfare were confirmed as EH pigs showed more positive behaviour, less aggression behaviour during the weaning transition and better human animal relation during the post weaning phase. Regarding the pigs’ immune status, EH pigs had higher values of haemoglobin and mean corpuscular volume in haematological profiles and higher percentages of T cells and cytotoxic T cells in peripheral blood. Furthermore, EH pigs showed higher ex vivo secretion of IL1ß and TNF-α after lipopolysaccharide stimulation of whole blood than CH pigs. The structure of the developing faecal microbiota of CH and EH pigs significantly differed as early as day 12 with an increase in the relative abundance of several bacterial groups known to be involved in the production of short chain fatty acids, such as Prevotella_2, Christensenellaceae_R_7_group and Ruminococcus gauvreauii group. Furthermore, the main difference between both housing conditions post weaning was that on day 61, CH pigs had significantly larger inter-individual variation of ileal and colonic microbiota than EH pigs. In addition to housing, other intrinsic factors (e.g., sex) were associated with gut microbiota development and immune competence. Conclusions In addition to the known welfare benefits for pigs, environmentally enriched housing also positively drives important aspects of the development of the immune system and the establishment of gut microbiota in early life. Consequently, EH may contribute to increasing productivity of pigs and reducing antibiotic use.


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