Assessing the Psychological Priorities for Optimising Captive Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) Welfare

Abstract

The welfare status of elephants under human care has been a contentious issue for two decades or more in numerous western countries. Much effort has gone into assessing the welfare of captive elephants at individual and population levels with little consensus having been achieved in relation to both the welfare requirements of captive elephants, or their absolute welfare status. A methodology capable of identifying the psychological priorities of elephants would greatly assist in both managing and assessing captive elephant welfare. Here, a Delphi-based Animal Welfare Priority Identification System© (APWIS©) is trialled to evaluate the reliability of the methodology and to determine the welfare significance of individual behaviours and cognitive processes for Asian elephants (Elaphus maximus). APWIS© examines the motivational characteristics, evolutionary significance and established welfare impacts of individual behaviours and cognitive processes of each species being assessed. The assessment carried out here indicates appetitive behaviours essential for survival in the wild, together species-specific social and cognitive opportunities are likely to be important to the welfare of Asian elephant in captivity. The output of this assessment, for the first time, provides comprehensive species-specific psychological/welfare priorities for Asian elephants that should be used to inform husbandry guidelines, habitat design and management strategies and can also provide a valuable reference tool for Asian elephant welfare assessment. The effective application of these insights could lead to substantive improvements in captive Asian elephant welfare.

Can Zoos Ever Be Big Enough for Large Wild Animals? A Review Using an Expert Panel Assessment of the Psychological Priorities of the Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) as a Model Species

“…Nonetheless, it has been demonstrated that indicators of impoverished captive tiger welfare were sensitive to habitat size [40,41], broadly supporting the conclusions of Clubb and Mason [35]. However, tiger welfare also appeared to be sensitive to habitat quality [40,42], as well as enrichment and feeding regimes [32,40,[43][44][45][46][47][48], suggesting that much can be achieved to augment captive tiger welfare by understanding their psychological needs and manipulating their habitats and management accordingly [13,23,28]. In 2018, an assessment of the psychological priorities of Amur tigers was carried out at the Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki, Finland.…”

“…Existing conceptual frameworks for understanding welfare, such as the five domains and five freedoms models, together with a variety of welfare assessment tools, are in broad agreement in regard to identifying and assessing the physical needs of animals [49][50][51]; however, neither model, nor any welfare assessment tool the author is aware of, outline a clear process for identifying species-specific psychological priorities. The absence of such a tool has had a tangible impact on animal care [13] and to address this deficit, an Animal Welfare Priority Identification System (AWPIS©) was developed to identify the psychological priorities as a means to direct management and habitat design to optimise welfare, and to assess the capacity of management strategies and facilities to safeguard welfare [23,28]. The AWPIS© assessment process is intended to complement existing frameworks pertaining to physical wellbeing, whilst providing much needed clarity on the psychological priorities for species.…”

“…The AWPIS© assessment process is intended to complement existing frameworks pertaining to physical wellbeing, whilst providing much needed clarity on the psychological priorities for species. Veasey argues that the output of this process allows, for the first time, physical and psychological priorities to be methodically optimised according to anticipated net welfare impacts [13,23,28].…”

“…AWPIS© is based upon the relationship between evolution, motivation and animal welfare, whereby behaviours or cognitive processes of high evolutionary significance will be highly and potentially frequently motivated for (see [23,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]). Consequently, if animals are frustrated in their desire to express behaviours or cognitive processes, the welfare impact of that frustration will be broadly proportional to its evolutionary significance [23].…”

“…Here, animal welfare is considered in relation to the affective or emotional states of animals (see [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]), with poor welfare occurring when an animal experiences severe or chronic states of mental suffering and good animal welfare occurring when an animal experiences positive emotional states and negligible mental suffering [20,23]. However, because animals cannot communicate their emotional states directly with us, feelings such as happiness and unhappiness remain impossible to measure directly [24,25] and difficult to assess indirectly (see [9,13,18,22,[26][27][28]).…”