[January 13, 2025] A Guide to Managing Zoo Animal Welfare: A Behavioral Approach

A Guide to Managing Zoo Animal Welfare: The Balance-Based Approach

This book delivers a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to behavioral assessment approaches, techniques, and tools for animal welfare, with an emphasis on animals living in zoos and aquaria. The authors develop a unique "balance-based" approach to assess and enhance the welfare of a diverse range of species, backed by extensive scientific literature.

Key Features

• Foundational Context: Section I details background concepts and goals, discussing the animal mind through neuroscience, psychology, and behavior, and questioning wild animal behavior’s validity as a template for captive animal behavior.
• The Three Needs Model: The book is structured around a unique framework. Section II details the core behavioral Needs of animals, investigating, acquiring rewards, and exerting control. Section III explains how to practically assess and address deficiencies in meeting these needs, covering topics like food, space, and social rewards.
• Individualized Welfare: It covers the highly variable personalities of individual animals and different species, and explains why personality is an an important facet of animal welfare.
• Practical Application: It includes a guide for assessing animal welfare using the Three Needs model and methods to make environments dynamic.
• Unique Insight: Presenting highly unique insight and a novel approach, this is an essential learning resource for professional animal behaviorists in zoos and aquaria, researchers, and students in veterinary sciences and zoology programs.