Formal Behavioral Evaluation of Enrichment Programs on a Zookeeper’s Schedule: A Case Study With a Polar Bear (Ursus Maritimus) at the Bronx Zoo

摘要

We conducted a brief study of the effectiveness of environmental enrichment for apolar bear at the Bronx Zoo with two objectives in mind. First we wanted todetermine if a novel method of collecting data that easily fits into a zookeeper’swork routine would produce usable data and if so, we wanted to evaluate theeffectiveness of some new items that had been purchased for enriching the polarbear in reducing his pacing behavior. Observations were recorded for 119 daysover a period of 5 months from April 2007 through August 2007. Five new itemsand eight previously used items were rotated and presented to the polar bear inthe morning and afternoon. We recorded the bear’s behavior five times per day aswe passed by his exhibit during our regular work routine. Predictably, we foundthat the newer enrichment items were more effective at increasing play anddecreasing pacing, as well as other more subtle effects on his behavior thathelped us to design a better enrichment routine. More importantly, we foundthat this met f ‘‘multi-point scan sampling’’ was effective at producing ample and reliable data that could be used to analyze the bear’s behavior without adding significant work to the keepers’ daily routine.