Accredited zoological facilities are committed to fully understanding the behavioral, mental, and physical needs of each species to continuously improve the welfare of the animals under their professional care and detect when welfare has diminished...
Accredited zoos and aquariums continually strive to ensure high levels of animal welfare for the animals under their professional care. Best management practices include conducting research to better understand factors that lead to optimal welfare...
Bottlenose dolphins are a behaviorally complex, social species that display a variety of social behaviors. Because of this, it is important for zoological facilities to strive to ensure animals display species-appropriate levels of social behavior...
Wildlife research has been indispensable for increasing our insight into ecosystem functioning as well as for designing effective conservation measures under the currently high rates of biodiversity loss. Genetic and genomic analyses might be able...
Poxvirus-like lesions are widely used as a potential health indicator in cetaceans, although for this application, corroboration of Poxvirus skin disease is imperative. Aiming to address skin biopsies intrusiveness, a preliminary investigation of a non-invasive...
This research focused on different aspects of play behavior including ethogram, ontogeny, and individual differences, in one male and one female captive bottlenose dolphin calves (Tursiops truncatus) from November 2003 to June 2004. We presented...
Questionnaires are very useful tools when it comes to assessing zoo based animal measures and caretakers of these animals (such as keepers, trainers and veterinarians) are in the best position to provide accurate answers to...
Zoos and aquaria must provide optimal husbandry conditions and the highest welfare standards for their animals. How the welfare state of an animal or a group of animals can be precisely assessed is currently under...
In the recent past, animal welfare studies have tried to determine the best animal welfare measures and indicators. Expression of behavioural diversity is considered a potential positive welfare indicator, and to the authors’ knowledge, it...
Over the last decades, exhaled breath sampling has been established for laboratory analysis in various cetacean species. Due to their small size, the usability of respiratory vapor for hormone assessments was questionable in harbor porpoises...