Abstract
Understanding why some species thrive in captivity, while others struggle to adjust, can suggest new ways to improve animal care. Approximately half of all Psittaciformes, a highly threatened order, live in zoos, breeding centres and private homes. Here, some species are prone to behavioural and reproductive problems that raise conservation and ethical concerns. To identify risk factors, we analysed data on hatching rates in breeding centres (115 species, 10 255 pairs) and stereotypic behaviour (SB) in private homes (50 species, 1378 individuals), using phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs). Small captive population sizes predicted low hatch rates, potentially due to genetic bottlenecks, inbreeding and low availability of compatible mates. Species naturally reliant on diets requiring substantial handling were most prone to feather-damaging behaviours (e.g. self-plucking), indicating inadequacies in the composition or presentation of feed (often highly processed). Parrot species with relatively large brains were most prone to oral and whole-body SB: the first empirical evidence that intelligence can confer poor captive welfare. Together, results suggest that more naturalistic diets would improve welfare, and that intelligent psittacines need increased cognitive stimulation. These findings should help improve captive parrot care and inspire further PCM research to understand species differences in responses to captivity.
Highlights
When kept by humans, why do some species thrive, yet others struggle? This question has been relevant since the dawn of domestication
Many wild animal species enjoy impressive lifespans and breeding success when kept in zoos, breeding centres or people’s homes [1]
Our results confirmed that phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) can test otherwise intractable hypotheses about causes of poor welfare, so yielding new insights for improving wild animal care and captive breeding
Summary
Why do some species thrive, yet others struggle? This question has been relevant since the dawn of domestication. Turning to foraging, wild parrots spend 40–75% of their active time in this behaviour [41,42,43], yet captive birds face spatial restrictions, dish feeding and processed diets which constrain opportunities to search for, select and manipulate food [40,44], a mismatch suggested to reduce parrot welfare (e.g. resulting in FDB [13,26,45]) This hypothesis predicts that species with naturally timeconsuming foraging will be most at risk of welfare problems. The hypothesis that behavioural plasticity pre-adapts animals to adjust to captivity [31] generates an alternate set of predictions about traits conferring risk, with small-brained, specialist parrots being most prone to welfare problems. We tested two further hypotheses: that rarity predicts breeding problems, and that threatened parrots are most at risk of captivity stress
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