The Effect of Feeding Method on Behavioral Indicators of Welfare in Zoo-Housed Pacific Walrus

For zoos to achieve their intended goal of inspiring pro-conservation attitudes and behavior in a society with evolving views on animals, it is essential to focus on maximizing animal welfare and subsequent zoo visitor perception. Challenges to providing optimal welfare to thousands of zoo-housed species include a lack of species-specific research to inform guidelines and husbandry practices impacting welfare. Behavioral monitoring can be an effective tool in evaluating positive affective state and welfare, especially for animals who possess a strong behavioral drive to perform specific highly motivated behaviors like foraging. As specialized foragers, walruses are highly motivated to engage in food search and ingestion behaviors, and the opportunity to do so may have a significant impact on their behavioral health and affective state. The present study sought to investigate if increasing levels of foraging opportunities would result in a positive affective state as evidenced by an increase in behavioral indicators of positive welfare. We conducted behavioral observations on a group of zoo-housed walruses to determine how changing feeding method ratios would affect occurrence of other species typical behavior. Our results supported that an increased level of opportunity to forage resulted in an increase in behavioral markers of positive welfare like social, active, and exploratory behavior. The results also showed a decrease in behavioral indicators of negative welfare (oral stereotypy). The observed increases, however, appeared to plateau at a certain ratio, indicating a mixed feeding strategy may be optimal for walrus welfare. Based on our findings, it is our recommendation that walrus feeding strategy include a designated amount of foraging that also allows for handing feeding to be utilized for behavioral conditioning. We also recommend that zoos dedicate resources and efforts to conducting in-house behavioral research on specific species, so that animal care recommendations and practices can be evidence-based and welfare-focused.