Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 10:18 AM EDT (1418 GMT)


Tigers are among the animals that fare the worst in captivity.



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LONDON (Reuters) -- Captive carnivores such as lions, polar bears, tigers
and cheetahs have difficulty adapting to life in zoos because they miss the
variety of the wide ranges they roamed in the wild, scientists said.
Animal behaviorists at the University of Oxford in England had thought that
carnivores fared less well in zoos and paced back and forth because they
missed the thrill of the hunt.
But after analyzing data on 35 species of carnivores zoologist Dr Georgia
Mason and her colleagues discovered that depriving the animals of their
naturally large territories was an important factor in predicting how well
they would adapt to captivity.
"We thought it would be something to do with hunting but we found instead
that home-range size and the daily distance they travelled naturally was the
predictor," Mason said in an interview Wednesday.
The most wide-ranging carnivores were prone to the worst problems in zoos,
she added, and had high infant mortality rates, while those who stayed
closer to home in the wild adapted best.
But Mason, who reported the findings in the science journal Nature, said the
animal's body size was not a primary factor. Some large animals such as the
grizzly bear, which has a home range of about 0.5 square km (0.2 square
miles), do well in zoos, have a low infant mortality rate in captivity and
spend about 11 percent of their day on average pacing.
Tigers and cheetahs, which normally cover much larger distances in the wild,
spend more of their time pacing and have higher infant mortality rates in
captivity.
The grizzly bear, Eurasian lynx, American mink, red fox and arctic fox,
which are more stay-at-home types, adapt best to zoos, according to the
researchers.
The study, which was partly funded by zoos and animal welfare and veterinary
groups, has important implications for zoos eager to improve the welfare of
carnivores in captivity.
The Federation of Zoos in Britain welcomed the results, although it said
they could be open to misinterpretation.
"Nevertheless such research is invaluable in helping to ensure we continue
to strive for the highest standards of animal welfare in keeping large
endangered carnivores in zoos and wildlife parks," Dr Miranda Stevenson, the
director of the federation, said in a statement.
Mason added that it was not just a matter of space for carnivores because in
some cases the animals travelled a greater distance pacing than they would
have in the wild.
"They can put the miles in, even in captivity, which makes us think that it
is not just space and enclosure size but something more subtle, perhaps to
do with day-to-day variety," she said.




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