Abstract
Simple SummaryBehavioral and physiological measures can be used in tandem to evaluate the impacts of animal care on snake welfare in zoological institutions. Herein, we evaluated the impacts of disturbance in the form of changing the newspaper, or ground covering, in animal habitats on seven snakes. Increased paper changes resulted in increased glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations, but did not result in increased behaviors associated with arousal (tongue flick, exposure, locomotion). These results demonstrate the need to further investigate the behavioral and physiological responses of snakes to different aspects of animal care at a species level. Furthermore, baseline behavioral and physiological data are needed to make identifying deviations from normal levels useful in welfare assessments.Modern herpetoculture has seen a rise in welfare-related habitat modifications, although ethologically-informed enclosure design and evidence-based husbandry are lacking. The diversity that exists within snakes complicates standardizing snake welfare assessment tools and evaluation techniques. Utilizing behavioral indicators in conjunction with physiological measures, such as fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations, could aid in the validation of evidence-based metrics for evaluating snake welfare. We increased habitat cleaning, to identify behavioral or physiological indicators that might indicate heightened arousal in snakes as a response to the disturbance. While glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations increased significantly during a period of increased disturbance, this increase was not associated with a significant increase in tongue-flicking, a behavior previously associated with arousal in snakes. Locomotion behavior and the proportion of time spent exposed were also not affected by more frequent habitat cleaning. These results demonstrate the need to further investigate the behavioral and physiological responses of snakes to different aspects of animal care at a species and individual level. They also highlight the need to collect baseline behavioral and physiological data for animals, in order to make meaningful comparisons when evaluating changes in animal care.
Highlights
This study found that while M. wagneri did not show increased locomotion or rate of tongue flick (RTF)
In response to increased substrate or newspaper changes, they did have a physiological response as detected in Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM)
The significant increase in FGM seen in Phase 2 of this study did not subside over the following month, indicating that snakes may demonstrate a long recovery time after experiencing a stressor or adjustment to new physiological ‘norms’
Summary
Reptiles have specific husbandry needs, and failure to meet these needs can result in impaired health and welfare [1,2,3,4]. Snakes are often kept under human care in minimalistic habitats [5,6,7,8], and snake welfare is an increasingly studied topic (e.g., [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]), as husbandry can vary greatly between, and even within, zoological institutions. Welfare- and evidencebased decision-making should be the cornerstones of good animal care. As animals respond to stress in several general ways (e.g., behavioral changes, alterations in the functioning of the autonomic nervous system, and both neuroendocrine and immune responses) [19], the development of standardized, evidence-based metrics for evaluating welfare should be as species specific as possible and include both behavioral and physiological components
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