Research, past and present

Following a change of situation at Dartmoor Zoo, my first proper post is about my ongoing personal research project; a behaviour study on our local African Lioness, Josie. She looks like this:

And she's doing a fantastic job advertising the zoo too!

Josie has lived at the zoo all her life, along with her father Solomon, who was born in one Heythrop zoo and moved to Dartmoor Zoo at the age of 3. He looks like this:

Admittedly Solomon is a bit of a skittish character, but I do have better photos in my portfolio.. on the right side of this webpage.

This isn't the first time I've carried out research with these lions, let alone animals in general. In the past I've done the following research projects, all of which are handy to mention during public education sessions, as they're all of equal importance to the zoological community:

• Enclosure use and feeding habits/behaviours in Dartmoor Zoological Park's African Lions, and how these findings complement each other. At one point, Solomon and Josie were seen sharing food with each other, and very rarely showed aggression.
• Social studies of lions preparing for release with the African Lion Environmental Research Trust. This included observations of which lions were most closely bonded, and who reacted positively to their own reflection in a mirror place outside the enclosure boundaries. Lions can see their reflections, but they lack what is called "Theory of Mind" which is to say they cannot recognise themselves or the identity and (complex) feelings of others. Using the mirror had a surprising result; the shyest male Zulu hogged the mirror, reflection and all and emitted all manner of vocalisations to show his happiness at seeing himself! 
• Behavioural studies of wild elephants in Livingstone, Zambia and the entirety of the Mosi-Oa-Tunya national park. Although these animals don't get up to much in short spans of time, just finding them was an achievement in itself, and figuring out how stable social groups are is of utmost importance.
• An online survey for the general public about current, modern conservation issues. Sound familiar? I'm still running it out of curiousity! There's a poll at the bottom of this blog to answer if you have time to please. Although the results no longer count towards the study itself - which was carried out during my time at Plymouth University - they are still interesting for myself and others to read. The original study aimed to relate the importance of religious beliefs such as Christianity, Buddhism and the lesser known animal-based belief Therianthropy with conservation issues. Would certain religious communities support the addressing certain conservaton issues more than others? Apparantly they would, especially as far as therianthropy is concerned. More information on therianthropy can be found at http://therianinfo.webs.com/therianthropydefinition.htm

Theta-Delta; symbol of the Therianthropy belief system. Although Therianthropy is not strictly a religion, it follows specific principals and therefore some people refer to it as a spiritual way of life.

You can always ask me for more details if you're interested in these studies! 

The current study with Josie at Dartmoor Zoo is a lot more basic than some I've done in the past, but it will be very important. I'm not at liberty to say why at the moment, but I will make another blog post as soon as I have the all-clear to do so. What I can say is that this study will take place over a long period of time - maybe even a few months - to observe changes in behaviours such as territorial acts (e.g. roaring), feeding habits and use of enclosure enrichment and toys. Since no two animals are the same, whether wild or captive, zoos need information like this to figure out important details like which enrichment devices make an animal stress out, how social animals interact with each other, and which animals are potentially compatible with animals in other zoos altogether. Most importantly, this information can be used for captive-release projects to determine which individuals are most suitable, however Josie is sadly not going to be involved in a project like this.

We can even anticipate how often animals will perform some behaviours if they happen to be "stereotypical." This means your average wild animal would not perform the behaviour to the extent a captive animal would. In some case, stereotypical behaviours should not be performed at all, because they're detrimental to the individual's health and signify stress. You can use research like this to figure out how often animals show stressful behaviours, and then act upon it accordingly with enrichment, new feeding rotas and more besides. On the other hand, you can always watch for how animals react to enrichment you're already using, like Solly here:

This video was recorded 3 years agos at Dartmoor Zoological Park. It shows Solomon the African Lion detecting a strong smelling substance placed on one of his enclosure's trees, and roaring to mark his territory. As roaring is a social behaviour, his daughter Josie joins in.  At Dartmmor Zoo, these substances usually include curry powder or catnip.

Catnip tends to reduce even the biggest of cats to cubs. Solomon is a prime example of this; although lions cannot pure, they do emmit a loud, low pitched moan when they're particularly happy which people mistake for a purr. During my time in Zambia, lions would happily moan away when greeting us or each other. A lion's roar comes from the diaphragm, while the moan is from the voice, hence why some lions can have very squeaky moans sometimes, even when fully grown! The same goes for other big cats such as Amur Tigers.

Vladimir, the world's only pacifist Amur Tiger, at Dartmoor Zoo. Previously known as a Siberian Tiger, Vladimir lives with his 2 younger sisters Blotch and Stripe, and while he is the largest big cat in the south-west, he doesn't have a rough-and-tumble nature. In fact he's even nervous about play fighting  Any attempts he makes at chasing his sisters are rapidly turned around on him!

Apologies if this post is too lion-based, but the African Lion is my specialty animal, so I thought I'd focus on what I know best to begin with. I'm truly fascinated by the complex behaviours of this social species, and I've gone from strength to strength applying my new-found observation skills to as many other animals as possible. This includes watching Asian Short Clawed Otters to see if any of them are taking too much food from their partners, or watching how fish in the National Marine Aquarium's largest tank make use of their enclosure at different times of the day. All useful information to know, and it makes me feel very smart to look back on it and share it with you all! Of course, once my study is completed, I'll be sure to share my results as soon as I can, but I'll need to get all my raw data and the statistical analysis' done first, so you will need to be patient on this one. Accurate studies aren't done in a day..!

An African Elephant in Livingstone, Zambia. This particular individual wasn't a wild elephant, but we observed over 30 wild individuals in a single day during a study in June, 2012.