I’ll be honest, I don’t have a lot of experience with captive land animals other than the alligators we have here at the aquarium. And alligators are fat and lazy anyways, so they’re great to be taken care of in captivity. Tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars, and panthers? They have a VERY ACTIVE and VERY WIDESPREAD lifestyle in the wild. In captivity their range is DRAMATICALLY cut down. They don’t have the space they would in the wild, and their social structures can be really screwed up.
Tigers are solitary animals. Lions live in prides of a ton of females and one or two males. Jaguar, leopards, and panthers are also solitary.
Elephants take incredible journeys hundreds of miles across Africa and they are confined to barely a one millionth of their natural habitat. I’m all for accredited zoos and aquariums, but I do think that there is a lot more we should be doing to give the animals we have better lives f we’re going to keep them captive. I even think that about the aquarium I volunteer at! I think our biggest tank is overstocked with permit and lookdown, but I’m just a volunteer, so I keep my mouth shut about it. Maybe one day if I get a job as the head aquarist, I’ll be able to contact our manager and try to remove some of the permit and lookdown for shipment to other larger facilities in the state.
I hope this answered your question!
@why-animals-do-the-thing @wheremyscalesslither
You guys have zoo experience, thoughts?
Thanks for the tag. @scriptecology, not to be a jerk, but posts like this are one of the reasons zoo staff tend to really dislike their volunteers. If you don’t have any experience around big cat husbandry, and you haven’t put in the time to research anything about their management and care, you really need to not be giving out information on it in the same context as other topics you’re actually knowledgeable on. This is a huge part of how misinformation spreads and it’s really, really frustrating to be an educator and see someone with reptile experience spouting off about big cat welfare.
Before I go into responding about big cat care and husbandry, since I just lectured you on knowing your shit before you talk about it, this is my background on the topic: I spent a summer as an intern in a world-class facility around amur tigers, leopards, and snow leopards; I have spent years doing research on and interviews with professionals about big cat welfare in captivity (among other topics); I’m currently in the process of a massive academic research project pertaining to tiger captivity;I’ve attended multiple local and national professional conferences during which I’ve sat in on welfare and exhibit design sessions and toured the large cat areas of enough facilities that I’ve lost count of the actual number. So when I say that good zoological facilities do a damn good job of managing big cats in captive environments, I have the personal and academic background to know what I’m talking about.
Space issues are one of the most common misconceptions about captive animal husbandry in general, but are especially pertinent to animals that maintain large territory ranges. There are two types of space-usage needs for animals: motion-based and resource-based. Animals that have a behavioral need to travel large distances do not do well in small enclosures because it’s an innate physical drive to move constantly (a good example of this is large pelagic sharks like great whites, and it is likely also applicable to orcas – although I will emphasize that there is not enough peer-reviewed research to tie a direct causation between physical ability to travel and reduced welfare, no matter how obvious a correlation might appear from the outside), whereas animals that travel to protect enough territory to provide adequate resources are not nearly as affected by living in smaller areas. Big cats are a perfect example of this. They are simultaneously masters of conservation of energy and also massive predators at the top of the trophic chain. In the wild, they maintain exactly a large enough territory to provide adequate food (and all of their food’s food and it’s food), fresh water, shelter, and mate access. If resources suddenly become much more condensed. their territories shrink to fit and no extra energy is devoted to defending extra space from interlopers.
A cat that sleeps all day in a zoological exhibit is not doing so because they’re depressed – they’re doing it because they’re a cat. Like their domestic counterparts, big cats rest and conserve energy for a large portion of the day. Considering that big cats often fast for periods of time between hunts, and expend massive amounts of energy when hunting, it makes sense that their behavior would be optimized towards not wasting energy when it’s not necessary for survival. Captive big cats do not have to patrol huge territories or hunt to find food, and so they spend less time actively traveling than their wild counterparts – and so they do what they’re optimized to do when resources are plentiful, which is rest and observe the world. To replace the activity normally required for survival and to keep captive big cats from being bored, facilities provide multiples and varied types of behavioral enrichment daily. We see big cats in captivity engaging in their entirety of their behavioral repertoire without developing major stereotypies and showing optimistic mentalities towards ambiguous stimuli – all documented signs of positive welfare situations.
Of the cat species you listed, only lions are social creatures – there’s not a lot of social structure to ‘screw up’ when you’ve got solitary big cats that only interact during territory disputes or to mate. Good facilities keep these social structures intact by housing most big cats separately and rotating them through access to the exhibit space (which allows the smell of the other cat to be enriching as well), as well as creating prides of lions within facilities and replicating natural dispersal by moving sub-adult males to other facilities to create their own pride. There are exceptions to the rule about co-housing – it’s often done by irresponsible facilities, or rescues that get already co-housed and bonded pairs, and sometimes siblings of the same sex are raised together – but all are carefully watched for signs of needing separation.
One of the best signs of captive welfare being successful is frequency of reproduction. Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Animals in stressful and low-welfare situations don’t breed frequently or have surviving cubs. There’s a booming and genetically diverse population of amur tigers in captivity, and the amur leopard and sumatran tiger SSP programs are doing really well. There’s a surplus of lions. Snow leopards and clouded leopards are some of the shyest and most easily stressed big cats, and yet more and more zoos are reporting healthy litters being born. If we weren’t doing a good job of taking care of these cats in captivity, those babies wouldn’t exist.
I’m not going to write an equally eloquent and in-depth answer for elephants because a) it’s not as simple and b) I don’t have the time or patience right now. I’ll stop at saying that our quality of care for them has always been much higher than it appears to the public eye and that it has also improved drastically in the last couple of decades. Currently the biggest roadblock to continuing to improve their captive lives is lack of funds for renovation and the backlash from animal rights groups that gets in the way of zoos doing anything useful. There was also a recent study on space usage in elephants you might want to check out – it indicated that how space is allocated and used may be more important to elephant welfare than how much space they have (although obviously more research is needed).
I know you’re interested in helping give out knowledge for folk who are writers, but please remember to make sure you do research on topics you aren’t personally knowledgeable about before you write about them. (And, seriously, if you’re a volunteer concerned with exhibits at your facility, rather than grump about it online you should probably ask staff why they don’t consider it overstocked and what the rationale behind that is. Nothing in an aquarium is ever done without consideration due to how carefully filtration and feeding must be balanced).
As another volunteer, this makes me so uncomfortable. I’ve reported people for similar talk (re: deriding the institution the people were literally volunteering for or spreading misinformation).
We’re there to help the institution and, in some cases, gain experience and understanding of the fields we may want to work in. I’ve seen enough people go in through the places I volunteer act like they know what’s happening. We have one mammal that is old and has some health issues (this is publicly known). People act like they know what they’re seeing, because they’ve read enough to give certain judgment, such as “something is happening here that is unusual,” but not know enough about the species involved or to ask questions.
A good example, I think, are birds. I was talking to some of the keepers and they said “Yea, we often get a lot of people thinking they’re sick or in trouble. They’re not. They’re molting and in a weird point of it.” People know to see “that bird is unusual” but not why it’s unusual. One bird we have will sometimes lie down and look dead. Nothing is wrong with it. That species just happens to sprawl out on the ground and look disconcerting to any well-meaning patron (or volunteer).
So much happens at a zoo or aquarium that it’s hard to have all the information… One of the golden rules I’ve applied to my volunteership, to better help everyone, is “If I don’t have the experience and understanding in the situation, don’t say anything.” Such as: if you don’t know much about big cat care and don’t have the experience in it, don’t talk about it. I know this starts to sound like being a jerk, but seriously… I know some places have major issues with animal rights folks, and this kind of talk reaaaaally doesn’t help.
I want to chime in a little bit from what I know about the elephants (Asian elephants, specifically) at the zoo where I work (I’m in the education department, so not directly tied to their care, but I do need to know things to tell guests about how we care for them, so take that for what you will).
We’re actually known in the zoo world for our elephant care – we host an international elephant workshop every other year to teach employees from other zoos about how we care for our elephants. They have numerous puzzle feeders throughout their exhibit, and the keepers will raise and lower some of them to encourage them to move throughout the exhibit through the day. They have sand and dirt everywhere, even in their barn, because it’s easier on their feet. There are logs and palm fronds laying on the ground throughout their exhibit to encourage them to step over them and work their joints as physical therapy. They get pedicures every week (a foot a week, so all their feet are done every month), and foot soaks every day.
There was a study done recently where they set up a camera and had volunteers mark where the elephant was in the exhibit every five minutes, and they found that they were really under utilizing part of the exhibit. So, the keepers now spend their lunch sitting on the wall near that part of that exhibit and throwing treats down there to encourage the elephants to use the whole exhibit.
Our three elephants don’t get along with each other, which is unsurprising considering they are not related. So, they are rotated on and off exhibit, and the elephants not on exhibit have access to an outdoor yard and an indoor barn.
And, like all the animals at our zoo, their keepers find novel enrichment for them and keep weekly enrichment logs.
SO MUCH time and resources have been spent ensuring the elephants are healthy, live in an exhibit that keeps them healthy and allows them and encourages them to perform their natural behaviors, and works their minds as well as their bodies. And improvement is constant.
But if all you did was look at how much space elephants usually use in the wild, and then looked at our exhibit, your initial reaction would probably be negative. Because you aren’t getting the whole story. THIS isn’t even the whole story. But it’s what I know after talking to some very educated people.
Additionally, if you cannot immediately talk to someone with education, experience, and access about a specific animal/exhibit, I would encourage you to remember this fact that I was told and that we tell guests: everything in the exhibit is there for a reason. Look at everything with a critical eye and try to figure out what purpose it serves.
For instance, our orangutans have a lot of towels and blankets in their outside enclosure and their day room. Guests frequently ask why there’s trash in their exhibit. But, of course, it’s not trash – orangutans make nests, so we provide them with a lot of different materials to do so (and our baby, Jiwa, loves to play with those towels). Instead of assuming that there is an issue, take a second to imagine what POSITIVE purpose something serves. You’ll surprise yourself and learn a lot.
I thought we do a decent job keeping large cats and elephants in captivity? I don’t know enough to comment on the other species you listed, but both my local zoos have big cats and elephants, and typically if a zoo is accredited don’t they know what they’re doing in regards to the animals they keep? I feel like we’d be able to keep these species alive and genetically diverse in captivity, especially since there’s already a lot of captive breeding going on with (that I know of) tigers today
Published
The Carving Witch 