Includes play and sleep.
Swimming is an important behavior for all penguin species. However, zoo-housed penguins typically do not swim as often as their wild counterparts, which may have consequences for their health and welfare. In an effort to...
Play has been proposed as a promising indicator of positive animal welfare. We aimed to study play in rats across contexts (conspecific/heterospecific) and types (social: pinning, being pinned; solitary: scampering), and we investigated its structure...
For the young of many species, social play is an important aspect of development. Previous research has shown that bottlenose dolphin calves engage in social play early in life. Despite these observations, little is known...
Play in African elephants (Loxodonta africana) is a life-long activity, with both males and females engaging in a variety of forms of play into their 40s and 50s. Play represents a potentially enriching social and...
Play is an important aspect of dolphin life, perhaps even an essential one. Play provides opportunities for dolphin calves to practice and perfect locomotor skills, including those involved in foraging and mating strategies and behaviors...
The predominant method of measuring welfare in swine focuses on overt physical ailments, such as skin lesions, lameness, and body condition. An alternative metric for assessing welfare in swine can be to measure the frequency...
Across the animal kingdom, immature animals are characterized by their playfulness and diversity of behavior, but are their actions enriching to adult conspecifics? The purpose of this study was to assess if beluga (Delphinapterus leucas)...
Circadian and circannual cycles of behavior regulate many aspects of welfare including metabolism, breeding, and behavioral interactions. In this study, we aim to demonstrate how systematically determining circadian and circannual cycles can provide insight into...
Captive grizzly bears, like their wild counterparts, engage in considerable variability in their seasonal and daily activity. We documented the year-long activity of two grizzly bears located at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington...
The ways in which humans can support good welfare for animals in their care is an ongoing subject of debate: some place emphasis on the animals’ physical health; others, on animals’ ability to live “natural...