Nature calls: intelligence and natural foraging style predict poor welfare in captive parrots

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.

Risk factors for stereotypic behaviour in captive ungulates

“…The effect of home range size in carnivores was greater for route tracing SBs than for all SB forms combined, suggesting that non-route tracing SBs have different drivers [70]. In captive parrots, diet specifically predicted feather-damaging SBs, yet having a larger brain size was associated with oral SB overall and with whole body SB [17]. It is therefore probable that similar differences in aetiology exist between the types of SB in ungulates.…”

“…We acknowledge several limitations for this study, many of which were the inevitable result of the paucity of detail provided in the datasets we interrogated. First, we pooled diverse forms of SB despite evidence from several species suggesting that different forms of SB do not share the same aetiology [14,17,70]. Although we set out to analyse oral and locomotor forms separately, the vast majority of published SB prevalence data do not separate the two forms, meaning resulting sample sizes were insufficient for the generation of robust models, and only preliminary analysis of oral SB data could be performed.…”

“…These landmark findings suggested that assumptions regarding SB in other taxonomic groups may be inaccurate, and may ultimately impact the welfare of animals in captivity via unsuitable enclosure designs and inappropriate environmental enrichment protocols. This approach has reframed SB research and has inspired cross-species phylogenetic comparative analyses of captive welfare and/or SB in primates [14], carnivores [15], ruminants [16], parrots [17] and lemurs [18]. These comprehensive, cross-species approaches to understanding SB are of critical importance, particularly for taxa in which these behaviours are prevalent and/or understudied.…”

Feeding, mating and animal wellbeing: new insights from phylogenetic comparative methods

“…Analyses used an ultrametric consensus ungulate tree using 1000 trees (from [14]) and phylogenetic generalized least squares regressions in R (cf. [3]). However, to maximize species numbers, we did not follow our preferred rule of excluding species represented by under 5 individuals [2,3].…”

Design and Analysis of Intelligent Agricultural Monitoring System Based on Biological Intelligence Optimization Algorithm

“…Since the fuzzy set theory and the basic principles of fuzzy control were proposed [4][5][6], people continue to research and innovate on the basis of its theory. e aforementioned basic fuzzy models have been improved in many ways [7][8][9][10]. Blind docking experiments are very different from ordinary docking experiments.…”