Environmental Enrichment Effects on the Activity of a Nearctic River Otter: A Thesis by Kenny Nelson
Admiral the North American River Otter (Photo by Jeff Gerew)
A masters thesis completed by Kenny Nelson at RIT was designed to determine how environmental enrichment affected the behavior of a Seneca Park Zoo North American River Otter. Enrichment is regularly used in Zoos to change a behavior in a captive environment. This can improve animal welfare by bringing out natural behaviors and combating stereotypic behaviors. A stereotypic behavior is the loss of naturalistic behaviors in captive animals, which are replaced by abnormal behaviors such as pacing. For the otter in the study, the ZooKeeping staff was seeing a repetitive swimming behavior.
Enrichment can be adding objects, smells, or food to an animal’s exhibit or even modifying enclosure design in an attempt to increase naturalist behaviors in a captive environment. For his work, Nelson presented four enrichment initiatives to the otter. These items included live fish, frozen fish, a swim tube, and PVC pipe scent tubes. These items were giving in a random order and placed throughout the exhibit.
Admiral the North American River Otter Photo by Jeff Gerew
The results showed that food (i.e. live fish and to a lesser degree frozen fish) was most effective in deterring a stereotyped swimming pattern. Nelson also observed a pattern of where and when the otter spent most of his time; data showed that the otter preferred to spend mornings in the lower level of the exhibit and the afternoons in the upper level. Food enrichment was more effective when given in the afternoon suggesting that the otters stereotypic behavior was occurring out of a lack of ability to forage.
Results like these can be an enormous help to animal husbandry staff at Zoos and Aquariums all around the country. Looking at these results the animal husbandry staff can create more opportunities for the animal to forage (by adding enrichment) and therefore increase the animal’s welfare (by decreasing stereotypic behaviors). Studies like this can determine which kind of enrichment works best for a specific species. Projects like these are exciting ways for researchers and Zoo staff to work together to better the lives of animals.
