Page 312 - Zoo Animal Learning and Training

284 11 Welfare Implications of Zoo Animal Training

VetBooks.ir are the goal of training, or indirectly during 11.7 Monitoring Animal
training for other behaviours. A common
Welfare as Part of Training
tool when training socially housed animals
is to ‘station’ them to one spot; reinforce Programmes
them for staying still in a specific location in To enable zoo professionals to assess and evalu-
the enclosure. The reasons for instigating ate whether a training regime is beneficial to an
this type of training could include: ensuring individual or not, the ability to measure zoo
that all animals could be trained effectively animal welfare is key. Currently there are very
despite being socially housed; ensuring that few species‐specific tools to measure welfare.
all animals were able to eat separate por- The welfare tool for elephants was developed
tions of food without competition; to reduce as a response to concerns over elephant welfare
the risk of aggression during times consid- in UK zoos (Asher et al. 2015) and was designed
ered to be problematic; to separate animals for use by elephant keepers to provide quick
when they are engaged in aggressive behav- and reliable daily monitoring to be evaluated
iour towards each other; maximising animal over time. Other species‐specific tools such as
visibility within an enclosure. Bloomsmith the one developed for dolphins (Tursiops trun-
et al. (1998) trained an adult male chimpan- catus) (Clegg et al. 2015) or Dorcas Gazelles
zee during meal times to sit and not perform (Gazella dorcus) (Salas et al. 2018) were based
aggressive behaviours towards cage‐mates. on farm animal welfare protocols such as
They observed that this training did not Welfare Quality® and have a mixture of animal‐
generalise to conditions outside of the train- based (parameters of an animals’ behaviour/
ing situation (feeding time) and yet enabled physiology) and resource‐based (parameters
all members of the chimpanzee group to including the environmental conditions or pro-
feed without aggression. This study demon- visions) measures. With only these few specific
strates welfare benefits can be conferred by toolkits available, reliably assessing animal wel-
training social restraint; which no doubt go fare on multiple grounds is difficult, let alone
further in yield gains for husbandry and with a specific focus on training.
mission goals. It would be interesting to see
further empirical data, about the impact of
such trained social restraint in other spe-
cies. It would be especially interesting to Take Away Message
explore how training might impact the
integrity of the social hierarchy, which Training provides zoo professionals with a
would ordinarily be set by the dominant tool by which they can effectively manipulate
animal(s) in the group, and instead removes the behaviour of animals in their care. This
that animal(s) control of the group and has led to many welfare benefits being asso-
translates effective governance of the group ciated with the use of training. The welfare
to the trainer. Within the paradigm of the impacts of training however, should not be
human–animal interactions, it is unclear, determined by whether its application was
whether this exchange of ‘dominant’ would intended to benefit the participating animals,
mean that the trainer is perceived to be part but result from empirical monitoring of its
of the social hierarchy, which would have application. Training is an extremely strong
implications of its own, or if the dominant tool, which enables you to exert control over
animal’s thwarted attempts to gain priority the actions of an animal, by determining
access to all resources might convey nega- which behaviours you feel it should perform.
tive ramifications. Either way, it seems rea- It is important therefore, to fully understand
sonable that altering the social hierarchy the impact you’re having when you train; and
will have impacts on behaviour and welfare what you might add, or remove, from the life
outside of the training event. of that animal as a consequence.