Captive Breeding, Conservation and Welfare

Abstract

An understanding of animal behavior is critical for identifying anthropogenic impacts to natural habitats, for improving conservation outcomes, and for enhancing the welfare of animals in captivity. Knowledge of animal behavior is important for a number of areas of conservation, such as predicting how animals will respond to overexploitation or environmental change, and for enhancing the success of captive breeding and reintroduction programs. In the latter case, an eco-evolutionary approach, involving quantifying the genetic and developmental basis of behavioural traits, can be used to evaluate species’ responses to captivity. This is important because the environment an animal experiences in captivity, coupled with the processes of genetic adaptation, typically result in low fitness when individuals are released into the wild. Divergences in the behavior of wild and captive animals can occur after just one generation of captive breeding, and captive-bred animals often display high levels of stress and/or aggression, a reduced response to predators, and abnormal repetitive behaviours. Studies of animal behavior can play an important role in ameliorating these effects; this is essential not only for the welfare of captive animals, but also for their educational and conservation value.