Application of environmental enrichment, as a means to successfully decrease undesired behaviors (e.g., stereotypic) and improve animal welfare, has been documented in a variety of zoological species. However, a dearth of empirical evidence exists concerning...
In dolphinaria, dolphins and their trainers build relationships and bonds due to the nature, closeness and repeatability of their interactions, hence training sessions are deemed appropriate to evaluate dolphin welfare. Qualitative Behavioural Assessments (QBAs) have...
Zoos should aim to provide all of their animals with a good quality of life (QoL) throughout all life stages. In parallel with the evolution of QoL assessment questionnaires and tools in human and domestic...
There is an ethical responsibility to provide all animals living in human care with optimal and positive well-being. As animals living in zoos and aquariums frequently interact with their human caregivers as part of their...
As people’s focus broadens from animals on farms to zoos and aquaria, the field of welfare science and the public’s concern for animal welfare continue to grow. In captive animals, stress and its causes are...
Visitors are a prominent feature in the lives of zoo animals, and their presence can cause a range of impacts on zoo animals (typically classed as positive, negative or neutral impacts), commonly referred to as...
All the studies that have considered the motivation of the dolphins to interact with their trainers as a possible welfare indicator have been carried out in facilities where the trainer-dolphin interactions (TDIs) sessions were reinforced...
Bottlenose dolphins are the most common cetacean kept globally in zoos and aquaria (hereafter zoos), and are gregarious animals with a mostly opportunistic, generalist feeding strategy in the wild. In zoos, they have limited to...
In captive facilities, odontocetes are subject to daily training/feeding sessions which often create close relationships between animals and their caretakers. Therefore, such sessions are thought to provide information that can be useful for welfare assessment...
Environmental enrichment is a crucial element for the promotion of welfare of animals kept under human care. While a large variety of environmental enrichments has been proposed and studied for terrestrial animals, including a growing...