Скачать или смотреть New elephant welfare tool rolled out in zoos +REPLAY+

(27 Mar 2019) LEADIN:
Scientists and elephant keepers have devised a tool which they say is helping to raise standards of care for the animals.
They've spent five years studying the detailed behaviour of elephants at a group of trial zoos across the UK.
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In the wild an elephant will spend hour upon hour foraging for food.
Here at Whipsnade Zoo keepers and scientists are coming up with all sorts of cunning plans to ensure their elephants use their brains and skills to get to food.
This young bull Sam is five years old and he's worked out that with his nimble trunk he can dislodge pieces of fruit hidden inside this contraption.
In an adjoining area the females are doing much the same, except for Elizabeth who is two years old and is still interested in playing with her exercise ball.
Another older female is knocking about a barrel, seemingly without purpose, but she knows that if she knocks the barrel in a particular way she can dislodge biscuits inside.
The biscuits are prepared using a specific recipe devised by the keepers, they're low on sugar and fat and have concentrated fibre.
By the number of barrels being knocked about you can see they're popular with the elephants.
This zoo was one of five in the UK that took part in a University of Nottingham study which looked at how elephant behaviour can be used to create an indicator of their wellbeing.
The study by the Elephant Welfare Group was led by Dr. Lisa Yon, a specialist in zoo and wildlife medicine at the university's vet school.
The group was initiated by a UK government report in 2008. According to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs it was a response to research which found that many elephants had foot health and gait problems. The majority were overweight, and around half demonstrated stereotypical behaviours.
Yon says: "The UK government has asked for all the UK zoos to show that they're assessing, monitoring and improving their welfare and the problem we have is there were no existing validated tools for keepers to use to do that and so as we started developing the activities of the elephant welfare group we realised that it was going to be essential early on to develop and validate a tool, something that could be used by keepers, consistent so they'd be used across all the different zoos, something they could use to monitor the wellbeing of their elephants over time so that as they continued to make changes and zoos are constantly making changes to try and improve the facilities and the way they're managing their elephants, that we would have a tool that would capture the benefits that had to their behavioural welfare."
The scientists and keepers have compiled masses of detailed information over five years.
That data bank has enabled them to create a simple questionnaire which helps keepers to quickly take down relevant information which contributes to the existing information.
Whipsnade Zoo is part of the Zoological Society of London which carries out research on animal welfare.
Mark Howes, the deputy leader team leader for the elephants, believes the research has already contributed to improvements.
"So what we're doing is we're trying to analyse the behaviour of the elephants. What we're trying to achieve is so a lot of really natural behaviour. So by using the tool that's been provided to us by Lisa we're kind of monitoring their behaviour throughout different seasons of the year and over a period of time by building this kind of data up we can see that we'll make hopefully positive changes in their care and their welfare over many years."

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