Macropods, particularly kangaroos and wallabies, are common species included in walk-through habitats that put them in close proximity to zoo visitors. However, there has been little research into how visitor presence and density impact the...
Despite the growing interest in research on the interaction between humans and dogs, only a very few research projects focus on the routines between dogs and their owners. In this study, we investigated one such...
Human interaction is one of the most consistently effective interventions that can improve the welfare of shelter-living dogs. Time out of the kennel with a person has been shown to reduce physiological measures of stress...
Human-wildlife interactions continue to increase due to anthropogenic disturbances, with some interactions resulting in conflict. Leveraging a taxa’s bias for a particular sensory cue is a promising management avenue for reducing the potential and realized...
Studies on how visitors affect penguins in human care report a mixture of negative, neutral, and positive impacts on behavior and physiology. Swimming is a highly motivated behavior that may promote positive welfare in penguins...
In the zoo environment, anthropogenic noise is common as sound levels fluctuate due to visitors, construction, habitat design, and special events. In this study, changes in the mood of three species of zoo-housed primates in...
Visitors in a zoo environment have the potential to impact the animals that they are viewing in a variety of ways. Recently, there have been suggestions that free-range enclosures, where visitors can walk directly through...
Ecotourism managers and researchers often assume that apparently habituated primate groups no longer experience adverse consequences of prolonged exposure to tourists or researchers. We examined the effects of tourists and researchers on fecal glucocorticoid metabolite...
In natural environments, bear behavior follows seasonal patterns but the zoo environment differs from the natural environment in several ways, including the presence of zoo visitors. Although typically difficult to disentangle, we were able to...
In mammals, human-animal bonding is recognized as a source of positive affect for companion or farm animals. Because this remains unexplored in birds, we investigated captive parrots’ perspective of the human-animal relationship. We used a...