Do "lazy" animals really need big enclosures?

Hipporex

Hipporex

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
By "lazy" I mean animals that spend the majority of the lounging around resting, basking, or sleeping. Animals such as big cat and crocodilians spring to mind but I think creatures like sloths, koalas, and hippopotamuses would fit the bill. A lot of these animals remain sedentary throughout the day and only become active during feeding time. For example, do lions really need multi-acre enclosures if they spend 18 to 20 hours a day sleeping? (For the record I'm not saying lions should be placed in cramped conditions, but would exhibits of half an acre or less suffice?) Personally I don't know what to think and that's why I figured I'd ask the animal-minded people of this site.
 
As usual that is a big depends. You want an enclosure/exhibit that combines a number of different needs. The animals welfare, aesthetics, cleanliness and ability of the public to see the animals.Large enclosures may be pleasing to the eye and fit all the animals needs but if the public routinely can't see them it is a massive failure. A smaller enclosure with a lot of enrichment is probably far superior to a large one where the animals sleep all day.
Personally speaking an idealized situation would probably be one where more than one female and more than one male are kept. One or more larger enclosures that animals can exhibit natural behaviors/hiding with lots of enrichment and or exercises, a smaller enclosure where the animals can be see easily and up close, and proper backroom facilities for rotation/ introduction/denning .
Then rotate the critters between exhibits daily. Most zoos are weak at the spare animals and
the death of an individual can shut down breeding programs- sometimes for years and years.
 
I believe that the problem here is reliance on an outmoded and ancient view of animal husbandry. Yes, if a lion sleeps most of the time why does the pride require a large enclosure all its own? But what about the hours when they are active? And what activity motivates them? Why shouldn't they have access to all of that when they are active? But then what is done with that large space when the animals are not active? Why should it sit empty and unused? Why can't that space be available for other animals to use?
As long as our vision is based on animals in cages we cannot meet their needs or use our resources well. We need a new model and some zoos have been playing with new appproaches.
 
It depends how you interpret the phrase really need.
If we had had this discussion a century ago, I suggest that most people would have said that many lions live long and healthy lives and produce healthy cubs in the barred cages of city zoos (and even in some travelling circuses), because they have good food, good care from their keepers and good clean, warm, secure housing: so they must have had everything that they really needed.
We think we know better now. We certainly know a lot more. We know about the social organisation and the behaviour of wild lions. We also know that zoo visitors like to see lions in nice, big, beautifully landscaped enclosures (although they may complain if the lions are too far away to see clearly or hidden in the trees or asleep all through their visit). But do we know better about what lions really need?
I think there is very little objective evidence to answer this question, even in species as well known as lions. And we do know that lions are really quite different from tigers, and from jaguars, and from snow leopards . . .
The husbandry of each individual species is a multifactorial problem: animals can do badly in an ideal enclosure if something is wrong with the physical conditions or the diet or the social structure or the way they are managed and so on. The publication of husbandry guidelines is a step forward, in that it spreads ideas from zoos that do well with a species to other zoos, but it is still essentially subjective. Animal behaviour research aim to be objective, but as long as this research mainly consists of short term, small scale studies its value is very limited. The sort of large scale studies like the ones that Marian Stamp Dawkins pioneered on domestic animals might tell us more, but we probably need to do one for each species. Perhaps this sort of question is ultimately unanswerable - but we must keep working towards better answers than we have now.
 
gentle lemur said:
It depends how you interpret the phrase really need.
If we had had this discussion a century ago, I suggest that most people would have said that many lions live long and healthy lives and produce healthy cubs in the barred cages of city zoos (and even in some travelling circuses), because they have good food, good care from their keepers and good clean, warm, secure housing: so they must have had everything that they really needed.
We think we know better now. We certainly know a lot more. We know about the social organisation and the behaviour of wild lions. We also know that zoo visitors like to see lions in nice, big, beautifully landscaped enclosures (although they may complain if the lions are too far away to see clearly or hidden in the trees or asleep all through their visit). But do we know better about what lions really need?
I think there is very little objective evidence to answer this question, even in species as well known as lions. And we do know that lions are really quite different from tigers, and from jaguars, and from snow leopards . . .
The husbandry of each individual species is a multifactorial problem: animals can do badly in an ideal enclosure if something is wrong with the physical conditions or the diet or the social structure or the way they are managed and so on. The publication of husbandry guidelines is a step forward, in that it spreads ideas from zoos that do well with a species to other zoos, but it is still essentially subjective. Animal behaviour research aim to be objective, but as long as this research mainly consists of short term, small scale studies its value is very limited. The sort of large scale studies like the ones that Marian Stamp Dawkins pioneered on domestic animals might tell us more, but we probably need to do one for each species. Perhaps this sort of question is ultimately unanswerable - but we must keep working towards better answers than we have now.
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Brilliant post!

Just to add to it, "need" has a specific meaning in animal welfare science. Behavioural needs are behaviours animals are internally motivated to perform, even without external rewards. In other words, they are process-orientated, rather than goal-orientated. When we recognise the importance of climbing opportunities for orangutans or a pool for tigers, we tacitly acknowledge behavioural needs (sex on birth-control is the classic human example). These motivations evolved because they (usually) lead to adaptive goals under natural conditions, but often don't in captivity. Even so, preventing their expression is a serious welfare issue.

This is why many pro-zoo arguments are nonsense (e.g. "they don't need to roam, because everything is provided here"). From the animals' perspective, it's plausible they aren't roaming to find food, a mate, territory or whatever; they roam because it's inherently rewarding. This is the best explanation for why wide-ranging species generally fare worse in captivity (with lots of research backing that up). A frustrated need to roam is also implicated in the prevalence of locomotor stereotypies in carnivores. If we consider taxa with different needs/frustrations (e.g. hoofstock with low-roughage captive diets), their abnormal behaviours tend to be different as well (i.e. oral stereotypies - what a surprise!).

So, to answer the original question, it depends. Despite being mostly inactive, some species may need lots of space to express their behavioural needs (perhaps even more than a zoo could provide). Others maybe don't. The first step towards testing this is providing animals with resources and observing whether they continue performing the behaviours to obtain them. Unfortunately, the zoo community has been painfully slow with the large-scale species-by-species research on this @gentle lemur recommends.

Newsflash: until a species' behavioural needs are understood, ZooChatters don't know any better than PETA whether they have good welfare.
 
Perhaps slightly off topic, but I wonder how well a system of interconnected enclosures would do for the activity levels and husbandry of some more lazy species. Like if you had, say, three large enclosures in an African exhibit housing Lions, various mixed hoofstock, and perhaps a smaller carnivore like hyenas. All three enclosures are capable of containing all respective taxa, allowing them to be shifted between them from day to day and even overnight. I'd imagine the constant change in smells and environment might do wonders for activity levels and breeding of the species. I'm not sure how practical of a design this would make, though. I know some zoos, like Highland Wildlife Park, allow some herbivores to graze in the predator enclosures at night.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Perhaps slightly off topic, but I wonder how well a system of interconnected enclosures would do for the activity levels and husbandry of some more lazy species. Like if you had, say, three large enclosures in an African exhibit housing Lions, various mixed hoofstock, and perhaps a smaller carnivore like hyenas. All three enclosures are capable of containing all respective taxa, allowing them to be shifted between them from day to day and even overnight. I'd imagine the constant change in smells and environment might do wonders for activity levels and breeding of the species. I'm not sure how practical of a design this would make, though. I know some zoos, like Highland Wildlife Park, allow some herbivores to graze in the predator enclosures at night.

~Thylo
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Well rotational exhibits have been tried (as I expect you know) in Louisville, Port Defiance and elsewhere. IMO they have not been ambitious enough to really succeed.
 
  • ThylacineAlive said:
    Like if you had, say, three large enclosures in an African exhibit housing Lions, various mixed hoofstock, and perhaps a smaller carnivore like hyenas ...allowing them to be shifted between them from day to day and even overnight.
    Click to expand...
Berlin Zoo used to let the spotted hyaenas into the outdoor lion enclosure after the lions had been shut indoors for the night.
 
Zooplantman said:
Well rotational exhibits have been tried (as I expect you know) in Louisville, Port Defiance and elsewhere. IMO they have not been ambitious enough to really succeed.
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In your opinion, what would need to be done to have truly successful rotational exhibits?
 
Zooplantman said:
I am afraid that would be a long discussion. Last year I had the opportunity to develop the idea while working on a master plan. When (and if) that client announces the plan I'll explain further. Sorry to sound coy.
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No problem. I appreciate your, and everyone else's, input thus far.
 
At the Detroit Zoo, behind the snow monkeys, there is an indoor exhibit called the Hangout. The exhibit has sloths and bats. The exhibit is designed really nice, but all they do is hangout. The sloth hangs out in a dog cage in the back and the bats hang out next to the glass. They really do need a small exhibit if they don’t use all of their space.
 
Blake Varga said:
At the Detroit Zoo, behind the snow monkeys, there is an indoor exhibit called the Hangout. The exhibit has sloths and bats. The exhibit is designed really nice, but all they do is hangout. The sloth hangs out in a dog cage in the back and the bats hang out next to the glass. They really do need a small exhibit if they don’t use all of their space.
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I would imagine that both species would be more active at night.

~Thylo
 
Giant Panda said:
Even if they don't use it all, extra space may improve welfare. It lets the animal choose where to spend its time. The exhibit won't all be equally preferred and avoidance can indicate unappealing areas. In small enclosures, animals lose that agency.
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This makes sense because the zoo does try to focus on animal welfare and most of their exhibits are very large.
 
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