Speaker 1: 0:00

After the tune a conversation with Brookfield Zoo, Chicago animal welfare scientist, Dr Lance Miller. Evolution Communication.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Cognition Conservation. Behavior Primatology Typically primates.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Become the monkey. Hey everyone, welcome to the PrimateCast. I am your host, andrew McIntosh, now of the Wilder Institute Calgary Zoo, and I believe through this show it is my job to chat with experts in primatology, wildlife science and beyond and share the stories gained with you. So before getting into today's conversation, I just want to take a moment to thank some new supporters of the show Oliver and MonkeyWire. Oliver had this to say about the show Happy to support the Primate cast has been a great source of information to me as I've developed in my own career. It really helps make the field more accessible to a wide range of audiences. Looking forward to seeing where you take it next. Thanks, ollie, and me too.

Speaker 1: 1:13

On that last point, I'm also really happy to hear you mention accessibility. I've said it before on this podcast and elsewhere, but when Chris Martin and I started this podcast, it was really because we noticed how many incredible primate scientists were actually rolling through Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute. Despite that, we're geographically so far away in Japan, apart from those of you who are lucky enough, like I was, to be at or near one of those very few research hubs dotting the globe, it's actually quite hard to get access to these people and certainly hear about those paths that took them to the places where they're at now. So I'm both happy and extremely grateful to be able to share these stories with you, wherever it is that you listen. And, by the way, I see now that the Primae cast has been listened to in 95 countries and territories and 1,238 cities around the globe. So, yeah, we are an accessible show and people seem to be taking advantage all over the world. It's super cool to see, and I love seeing those numbers keep growing, so let's make sure that keeps happening.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Yeah, and then the other one, monkeywire, also added this short but sweet note. Thanks for all that you do. You're welcome, it is a pleasure and it is an honor, and thank you for taking the time to brighten my day with such kind words and a few metaphorical mics to keep the show rolling here. But just to remind all of you out there who are listening that I do still really need everyone's support, either through a small donation or low fee monthly membership, through ratings and reviews, wherever you get your podcasts, through social media posts or direct messages or even fan mail, and or by spreading the word to anyone you think might get value from the show. Word of mouth works just great, but I definitely look forward to a new round of shout outs that I'll be happy to give when the next episode airs. But in the meantime, I have a great show for you coming up here with Dr Lance J Miller, vice President of Animal Welfare Science at Brookfield Zoo, chicago, formerly Chicago Zoological Society's Brookfield Zoo.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Lance has a lot of different co-appointments and I'm going to try and go through them here, but these are born of his commitment to, and clear expertise in, animal welfare science. He's Chair of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums Animal Welfare Committee. He's an advisor to a whole bunch of programs in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums or AZA, for example, their Research and Technology Committee, their Animal Welfare Committee and their Behavioral Scientific Advisory Group, and he's also a steering committee member for AZA's Ambassador Animal Scientific Advisory Group. And he's also a steering committee member for AZA's Ambassador Animal Scientific Advisory Group. He is currently the vice chair for the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee and chair of the WASA Ethics Subcommittee.

Speaker 1: 3:58

His involvement in international animal welfare science is one of the main reasons I invited Lance to Japan in March 2023, which is when this interview was recorded. The other reasons related to his specific research that he does in animal welfare science. A few years ago I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from Kyoto University to work on developing novel behavioral tools to assess animal welfare and, in particular, to implement an early warning system for animals descending into patterns of abnormal or stereotypical behavior. And totally coincidentally, by the way, I was just presenting some of that work at an Alberta primatology conference right here at the University of Calgary last week. But that digression aside, because of the research I was conducting, I was made aware of Lance's work in behavioral diversity, which he argues is a key indicator of animal welfare.

Speaker 1: 4:51

That topic does come up in the interview. But what ended up being much more important during his visit to Japan was an event that we set up at Kyoto City Zoo through my friend and colleague, dr Yumi Yamanashi, which was focused on animal welfare science in Japan and in the USA. That event was attended by hundreds of participants, mainly, or most even, based at zoos throughout Japan. Lance talked about the discipline of animal welfare science and the many ways in which Brookfield Zoo, chicago and other AZA-accredited facilities are contributing to animal care, health and welfare and the evolution thereof. These are topics that became a focus of our own conversation for the podcast, but Lance also talks about his own path to becoming an animal welfare scientist and the many stops he had along the way. I think his story is really going to help others considering this as a potential career path, as well as just being of interest to anyone who wants to know about those who dedicate their careers to this kind of work.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Some other topics that come up in the interview include the incredible cetacean welfare study. That's the largest multi-institutional study of cetacean welfare ever conducted, basically, and Lance had a huge part in setting that up. We also talk about stereotypical behavior in animals and other behavioral indicators of health and welfare, and we also talk about stereotypical behavior in animals and other behavioral indicators of health and welfare, and we even talk about public perceptions of animals in zoos and its relation to welfare and conservation. Now, having taught an undergraduate course on zoo biology for years at Kyoto University, I was really excited to speak with Lance about his thoughts on the matter, and you can just see me trying to tackle almost all of the issues of animal welfare at zoos in one single swoop, but it was really nice that we had the week prior to the interview to get to know each other a little bit really facilitated the conversation.

Speaker 1: 6:36

But Lance always just had the thoughtful and really to the point, insightful answers to all of my questions, even when it seemed that I droned on and on into the preamble abyss before finally landing one.

Speaker 1: 6:49

But one of the key takeaways from this conversation for me relates to how societal views and the industry views on animal welfare have evolved over the years, from previously just making sure that we addressed the bare minimum to now where we're really trying our best to provide ample opportunity for every animal or every individual animal under human care, to really flourish and thrive.

Speaker 1: 7:15

One can only hope that we're well on our way to achieving that dream. But as always, I learned a ton from this interview and we did cover a lot of ground in the zoo animal welfare space. So I hope you enjoy this conversation about zoo animal welfare science with Dr Lance Miller. Currently I think zoos kind of look at themselves as these places not just for people to go and be entertained and have a day out with the family although they are that, they are that but also to be educated about the animals in the collection and also about issues related to their health, welfare and conservation. And then also there's research is a big part of it, and so how have you seen in your career and I'll ask you in a moment about you know how you got into this current role but maybe to start, how have you seen that kind of philosophy of zoos or activities of zoos changing throughout your own interactions with them?

Speaker 2: 8:13

I don't think things have changed a whole lot. I think there's maybe a greater emphasis on some things, but I don't think things have changed that much. Even before we called it animal welfare, zoos were always focused on providing the highest quality care At least accredited I should say accredited zoos and aquariums have always been committed to the care and the welfare of their animals, even if we weren't calling it animal welfare at that point in time, so there might be a greater emphasis on the terms that are utilized, but zoos and aquariums have always been committed to the care and welfare of the animals under their care. These days, we actually are focused on what are the things that we need to be doing, because animals are living longer than they used to, because they do have such amazing care, and so focusing on that geriatric population and making sure that we're meeting their needs as well.

Speaker 1: 9:09

So for a little bit of context for the listeners, Lance has been in Japan for the last week and has been looking at different or visiting colleagues at different institutions, and we had an event at Kyoto City Zoo that was about animal welfare science in the US and in Japan, and we were meeting with some colleagues there. Yumi Onashi, who's a good friend and colleague of mine, was talking about the extremely old rhesus monkeys that they have or had until recently at Kyoto City Zoo and how it became a kind of fan favorite with the visitors at the zoo. So they set up a separate habitat for the geriatric animals that they moved them into and called it kind of like. This was kind of like a retirement home for the for some of the monkeys, and it became kind of a draw as well. But so what do we? What have we learned then recently about, you know, having these really old animals?

Speaker 2: 10:05

What we're learning is that these animals are experiencing a lot of the same things that older humans experience, so things like heart conditions or arthritis, and so just trying to learn the best techniques to make sure that those animals are comfortable in the older ages.

Speaker 1: 10:21

So, if we can go back a little bit, you in your career. I think you graduated or you got a doctorate at the University of Southern Mississippi and then we're off to Disney's Animal Kingdom before. Maybe you can interject something.

Speaker 2: 10:34

Oh, the other way around. Actually, the other way around, yeah. So when I graduated from my undergraduate university, took a job at Disney's Animal Kingdom, was there for about seven years and then returned to graduate school at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Speaker 1: 10:47

I see Okay, so what was your main kind of function or role at Disney's Animal Kingdom?

Speaker 2: 10:51

So I started off in the education department. On the weekends I would go down to Tampa Bay and volunteer my time to assist a graduate student studying bottlenose dolphins in Tampa Bay, florida. A research position opened up at Disney and they hired me in as a research associate and I worked my way up to a research manager and kind of hit a plateau and realized I couldn't go any further in my career until I went back to school. And so that's when I returned to graduate school and did my master's and PhD in experimental psychology.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Okay. So what were some of the kind of projects that you were involved with? I mean, disney's Animal Kingdom is kind of like maybe it's this kind of iconic idea about, obviously, the Disney franchise, um, and I've never been there, but I've heard, uh, you know, maybe people talk about it and have known some colleagues who've gone through there and worked at it. So I think the commitment to the animal there is is is pretty high, um, but also there's a lot of research, there's a lot of education happening there as well. So what were kind of your involvements with that?

Speaker 2: 11:49

So, from a research standpoint, I had a very unique position, which was amazing. Half my time was spent focused on conservation projects and then the other half of my time was spent focused on the welfare of the animals at Disney's Animal Kingdom. And so, from the conservation side of things, I did everything from working on projects with cotton-top tamarins in Columbia, south America, to doing turtle counts on the beaches of Vero Beach, florida. From a welfare standpoint, we did some projects looking at stereotypic behavior in tigers, all sorts of different studies looking at animals throughout the animal kingdom.

Speaker 1: 12:28

Okay, cool, you mentioned the cotton-top tamarins, so what was the involvement of having the wild population examined as well? So there was a population at the zoo, so was there any kind of conservation activities surrounding that?

Speaker 2: 12:45

So the work that we did with cotton-top tamarins was through a group called Proyecto TT, which is located in Columbia, south America. My main role was trying to get the staff that were on the ground trained up to do some work looking at, basically, a census so how many cotton-top tamarins are actually left in Colombia and so we did a whole bunch of work getting them trained up, getting them ready to go, and then they actually conducted the field work after I left and went back to graduate school.

Speaker 1: 13:23

I see, so these were reintroduced. Introduced animals.

Speaker 2: 13:26

No, these are all just wild animals, just wild animals.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Okay, so you weren't doing. I thought you meant you were doing training at the zoo or something.

Speaker 2: 13:32

No training in South America? In South America I see.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Okay, yeah, really interesting. I I'm quite fascinated by the interactions that um that zoological institutions, institutions have had with conservation on the ground and the field. We had a podcast earlier with a former graduate student and postdoc of mine, valeria Romano, who worked. She was a student in Brazil who worked on the Golden Lion Tamarin project and is now doing a bit more work with them as well. So she attended a meeting that they had for that project a number of years ago and obviously a lot of zoos were involved in the small population management and reintroductions, in addition to the conservationists in Brazil and the local landowners as well. So it was kind of a nice, maybe like one of the typical success stories that you know that we have out there for kind of zoo conservationists, local collaboration.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Yeah, that's definitely a good example kind of zoo conservationists, local collaboration, yeah that's definitely a good example.

Speaker 1: 14:30

There's a lot of them, though, yeah, yeah, well, maybe we can get to some of those a bit later, but okay, so you went after Disney's animal kingdom back to grad school, um, and then, uh, at some point ended up at San Diego's Institute for conservation, uh, research. Is that what it was called San Diego zoo Institute for conservation research? Is that what it was called San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research? Yep, okay, and so what kind of role did you have there?

Speaker 2: 14:49

So I was in a scientist position very similar but 100% of my time was focused on the animals at the zoo in the park, so it wasn't like the split at Disney.

Speaker 1: 15:02

And so I think you mentioned too that your first boss there was Fred Berkovich, who was a colleague of mine here at Kyoto University many years ago, and so I heard a lot about some of the activities that were happening there, and of course it's a world-renowned institution as well for science and research and for conservation. So what were the kind of main I don't know species or projects that you were working on?

Speaker 2: 15:25

So I was very fortunate In my time in San Diego. I got to work with a lot of great individuals to grow animal welfare program from the ground up. We did everything from preference assessments with the large carnivores to looking at factors that influence carnivore welfare. We did some projects looking at hippo vocalizations, all sorts of unique things. It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 15:52

So what do you learn about hippo vocalizations? Not a whole lot, to be honest. I don't think I can recall a time of seeing hippos vocalizing in my mini zoo experiences.

Speaker 1: 16:09

Yeah, we didn't learn a whole lot from that project, unfortunately, okay, uh, but of course many of the other ones. I'm sure you still have a lot of lasting results from. Uh, yes, yeah, not yesterday. When we visited the kyoto city zoo together on wednesday, uh, we were fortunate enough to see a kind of interesting display by the Asian elephants that they have there. It was quite frenetic and active and vocal.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Yes.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Yes, definitely true. All right, so San Diego Zoo, and so you've been in the current position in Chicago Zoological Society and Brookfield Zoo for what? Something like seven years.

Speaker 2: 16:43

I started back in the spring of 2014.

Speaker 1: 16:47

And so was it from the beginning in the same kind of position that you had now.

Speaker 2: 16:52

So I started off as Senior Director of Animal Welfare Research and, probably about four years ago, was promoted to Vice President of Conservation Science and Animal Welfare Research.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Okay, and so, in addition to kind of overseeing some of the research there, what is a kind of typical day or look like for you?

Speaker 2: 17:11

So a lot of my time is spent behind a computer writing grant proposals, writing manuscripts from research that we've concluded. But I do get to go out into the zoo, um, especially during when when we have new stuff or training and different things like that. So, um, it's very rewarding.

Speaker 1: 17:32

You presented some of the uh, some of the scientific projects that you're doing for uh, and and maybe this is something we can get into a bit later too Um, but one of the things that I wanted to kind of stick on for a moment is, I think more and more there's a growing demand for multi-institutional projects. So within, of course, your organization, you have a certain structure and certain activities that you would regularly be doing. But so how does that? You know, to what extent is that really becoming a kind of standard in the practice of doing animal welfare research, to work in collaboration with other institutions?

Speaker 2: 18:13

Yeah, so for a lot of the studies that we've been conducting recently, they have been more multi-institutional in nature In order to look at the variability across institutions. The more institutions that provide data for those studies, it's just going to give you better results, and so the more facilities that can cooperate together and really build those larger data sets to give you more information, it's just really critical.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Okay and does it? Yeah, not to throw any other institutions under the bus or anything, but I was just curious about and I asked you this during the seminar I think there's a lot of administration that goes into getting all the different partners on board and obviously you kind of expect a certain amount of additional work that they have to put in. So there's got to be this kind of reciprocal relationship that you can have with people. But for you, what was the process, like you know, developing those collaborations and you know, and also, how did you approach? You know, making sure that for the partners there's, there should be value also for doing that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2: 19:19

I think so. To put it in context for those that are listening, the cetacean welfare study was the largest ever study of its kind for cetaceans and I think it really demonstrates the industry's collective commitment to the continuous improvement of the welfare of cetaceans. Those of us that work in zoos and aquariums have a pretty good understanding that the animals thrive under our professional care, but we're always looking for areas where we can make improvements and I think this study was a really good example of that in terms of just everyone coming together and, with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums support, it was really easy to get these facilities to all work together and just do what again?

Speaker 2: 20:13

just really does demonstrate their collective commitment.

Speaker 1: 20:17

So maybe it's a good place to talk about the Cetacean Welfare Project. Can you describe kind of what that was and what the goals were?

Speaker 2: 20:24

Sure, so we worked with 43 facilities in seven different countries. Part one of the study was to develop reference intervals and values for some common and novel indicators of health and welfare for four species of cetaceans. Those were common bottlenose dolphins, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, Pacific white-sided dolphins anduga Whales. The end result was a new IOS application called Zoo PhysioTrack, where facilities that have those species of cetaceans can freely download the app and pull up, enter some basic demographic information about the animals that they care for and make sure that the animals fall within the healthy reference intervals that are provided. Part two of the study focused just on common bottlenose dolphins and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, and we looked at factors such as enrichment, animal training, habitat characteristics, social management and, ultimately, what we found was that all the things that our amazing animal care staff do on a day-to-day basis was most important in terms of correlating with indicators of animal welfare, while size of the habitat was significantly less important.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Yeah, that was one thing that drew a bunch of questions, when you presented this the other day, from us wildlife researchers. When we think of the size, Well and that's also an issue that often comes up is, you know, providing the kind of space that many of the animals need actually? So it was interesting to see that. I think everybody can appreciate that there are many factors that go into the well-being of an animal, but to see from your data that the size and I think I asked you what range of sizes you had it was quite large. So there were many, you know, smaller to much larger by multiples you mentioned. So it's quite interesting to see that that wouldn't be the dominant and maybe not so surprising, but interesting to see that it wasn't the dominant factor, Definitely.

Speaker 2: 22:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:20

I mean, is that something in terms of an output that kind of gives people a sigh of relief in a way, or how should zoos kind of look at that result?

Speaker 2: 22:45

having animals such as cetaceans or elephants in habitats that are so much different from their native habitats. So I think we really need to do a better job of educating them that it really is all the things that our amazing animal care staff do on a day-to-day basis that really makes for the great care and welfare.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Do you think then, on the flip side of that, if the zoo has the opportunity to increase the space that an animal has access to, that it's insufficient in the way that? So if, if having a smaller size isn't the dominating factor for having negative welfare outcomes, then the corollary of that would be increasing the size might not have as much welfare benefit as you might normally predict correct. In which case maybe just adjusting the size might not be the first thing that they should focus on, but it would be the other kinds of activities or enrichment opportunities that could be provided.

Speaker 2: 23:32

Correct, yeah. So from a welfare standpoint, zoos and aquariums should really be investing more and more in their animal care staff and making sure that they have the resources that they need to provide all that great enrichment and training.

Speaker 1: 23:45

So you mentioned a moment ago Zoo PhysioTrack. So this is an app that people can access. I think you said it was free. It is free, yes, and so that would be a way to track kind of physiological markers in the zoo animals that you would be using and could eventually use for reference values or comparative purposes. And I noticed you mentioned some other. There was something you mentioned in your talk the other day ZooMorphTrack, I believe it was called.

Speaker 1: 24:12

I know Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago has developed a ZooMonitor, which is a behavior recording data collection software that I think now is being used by many different facilities around the US, and I actually use it with my students and interns. It seems like, oh, and I think you mentioned ZIMS. So ZIMS is another more database-oriented way to keep track of the individuals that are in human care, but at institutions like ZIMS and aquariums. But it seems like there's a lot of kind of tech also being developed to support the welfare practices, and so how do you kind of implement these into your own kind of work? Do you think there's a lot of promise for that and what maybe is still kind of missing? Do you see any other ways that we could automate things to make them more effective?

Speaker 2: 25:00

So yeah, zoom MorphTrack was an app that came out of a collaboration between a number of different institutions. We are very fortunate at the Chicago Zoological Society to have the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which is run by Dr Randy Wells. They've been studying those dolphins for over 50 years in Sarasota Bay Florida studying those dolphins for over 50 years in Sarasota Bay Florida, and from that they have a whole bunch of data that we can use to better manage animals within the Brookfield Zoo or any facilities that have bottlenose dolphins. And so Zoo Morph Track is actually an application where a facility can log in or download the app for free and pull it up and look at does their dolphin fall within the healthy range of weights for an animal compared to Sarasota Bay Florida? And so they enter in the length, the girth and the weight of their animal and the age and a couple other demographic information and it'll actually plot where their animal falls compared to animals in Sarasota Bay Florida to make sure that they're within a healthy weight range.

Speaker 2: 26:09

But to answer your other question, I think the technology is continuing to advance to the point where, hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll be able to automatically record behavior of animals without having to be there in person.

Speaker 1: 26:22

Yeah, this is something that's very interesting to me, and I think in your cetacean welfare project you had some devices that were attached M-tags, I believe they're called attached to dolphins so that you could record some kinds of behavior. So can you maybe talk a little bit about those?

Speaker 2: 26:38

Yeah, sure. So that actually came out of a wonderful partnership with the University of Michigan Engineering Department, dr Alex Shorter's lab. They had previously developed what were called digital tags, or D tags, which had been used on wild whales and dolphins for quite some time, and, working with them, we partnered to create what's called an M tag, or a movement tag, which doesn't have the hydrophones that the original D tag had, but but it had a couple different sensors to allow us to recreate 3D tracks of how the dolphins were using their space for the Salutation Welfare Study.

Speaker 1: 27:17

So what kind of data were they actually collecting or logging on the animals?

Speaker 2: 27:21

So there's a variety of different sensors in it there's an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure sensor to look at depth, an impeller to look at velocity, and the suction cups that are used to attach it to the dolphins were specially designed to make sure that they would stay on without doing any damage to the dolphin's skin.

Speaker 1: 27:43

Yeah, it was like super well. That generated also some interest because we have a lot of people who do wildlife tracking, for example, and some of our faculty at the Wildlife Research Center also study cetaceans and mentioned that it's actually quite hard, so they don't stay on kind of for long enough. And then there's other issues getting into international waters around Japan.

Speaker 1: 28:04

that you don't have to worry about, I think in a zoological or aquarium setting. But the kinds of data that you can get are really interesting. And I think I asked you, and I think I want to ask again for the listeners, how you think so those dolphins were wearing those, the M tags and before that some dummy N tags so they could habituate right, and they ended up wearing those for quite some time. They could be removed, you know, at certain times as well by the training staff. But did you hear anything about the public perception of having the animals wearing devices like that? And you can ask the same question about having animals interact with computer screens during cognitive testing or, you know, carrying iPads around. So we've seen some gorillas in the past doing. Do you think there's any special need for a different kind of messaging when you have devices deployed with animals to make sure that the public understands what's going on?

Speaker 2: 29:00

So at the Brookfield Zoo during this study, we actually had signs made to inform the public about the research that was going on. And what's great is, as we learn more and more from our audience research, the more visitors learn about what's going on behind the scenes in terms of the research and all the great things that our animal care staff does. They really do have a higher perception of the level of care and welfare that the animals receive. So educating our visitors about all that stuff is really, really important.

Speaker 1: 29:32

So a moment ago you mentioned that. So the partnership that you have with the I'm forgetting the name of it, but it was in the Sarasota Bay.

Speaker 2: 29:44

So the Chicago Zoological Society has the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program.

Speaker 1: 29:48

Okay, so that's under the CZS. Yes, then because of that you have this opportunity to kind of compare whether it's the morphological traits, physiological traits, behavioral traits you see in your animals with what's actually happening there. And it kind of raises this kind of philosophical, also scientific, question of how should we think about where the goalposts should be for any of those range of traits with respect to what you see in the wild. So is it? You know, if you see behaviors of dolphins in the Brookfield Zoo that kind of looks similar to what you would see in Sarasota Bay would kind of give you a sigh of relief as well. But is that? Do you think that has to be the gold standard? Is there a different way that we have to think about, like, what the standards for animals in professional care should be?

Speaker 2: 30:46

The thing I always want people to think about is the fact that nature isn't always perfect. It's not this pristine, perfect environment. Take bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, florida, for example. They have potential predators, they have pollution, they have boats going by every 20 seconds or however often it is, and so when we think about animals in zoos and aquariums, they don't have to deal with all those different pressures. And so when we think about the welfare of animals, we do make comparisons to wild, especially if there's data available, like the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which is absolutely wonderful. But in zoos and aquariums we have so many different species that there's just not natural history information available, and so in those cases, what we typically do is look at okay, how are our animals at the brookfield zoo comparing, compared to the same species across aza institutions?

Speaker 1: 31:43

and so what? What would be the outcome of that? So let's say you did a a big comparison. You had some species that you were interested in or worried about. You did some kind of broad comparison within AZA institutions, and maybe you could even be expanded to international institutions. But so how would you use the information then to make decisions?

Speaker 2: 32:01

So it just really depends on the situation. So if you're, let's say, you have a species that may not be doing as well as the other AZA populations, or maybe you find a difference compared to their wild counterparts, the best thing to do is collect more information. So either reaching out to those other facilities to find out what are the differences in management techniques that are being used, and then either A making management changes to improve the care and welfare of those species, or sometimes it comes down to making a difficult decision of maybe moving those animals to a different facility where they might have a better, better overall welfare.

Speaker 1: 32:40

Is that a pretty common outcome?

Speaker 2: 32:42

I don't believe so. I mean it does happen occasionally, but I don't think it's a very common thing. I mean I'm a firm believer that with enough science we can provide high levels of care and welfare for pretty much most species.

Speaker 1: 32:56

So in the dolphin welfare project that you just talked about, you had over 40 different partner institutions, and so was there any kind of direct outcomes in terms of how the animals are managed or what kind of enrichment is given from that project itself?

Speaker 2: 33:11

Yeah, so just using Brookfield Zoo as an example, we already had a very robust enrichment program, but as a result of that program there's now a person who's dedicated just to environmental enrichment, and that really is a result of that project.

Speaker 1: 33:25

What do they do specifically for environmental enrichment for dolphins?

Speaker 2: 33:29

So there's a variety of things I mean. It can be anything from cognitive enrichment to providing different things in the environment for the animals to interact with. It's all behavior-based. So it's really about not what's the fun new little object that you can put in with the animals. It's more about what are the behaviors we're hoping to see and how to. How can we get creative to think about, what are the things that we can do to allow the animals to engage in those behaviors?

Speaker 1: 33:57

Okay, Interesting Another question I had based on this dolphin welfare project is. You mentioned with the M tags that you have a collaboration with the university of of of Michigan. I think it was Correct. And so I think there's a long, probably depending on the institution, but a lot of collaboration between academic and zoological institutions. And you know, if you go back to maybe the origins of many of the iconic zoos throughout the history, at least in Europe and North America, they were often originally conceived by or with scientists and zoology in mind, right, so that you have that long history. But I think there's also a lot of I shouldn't say a lot, but there may be. I don't know if hesitation is the right word, but there's not always going to be tight collaboration between academic researchers and those based at zoological institutions, and so I wonder if maybe you can talk about like how that those specific collaborations came out for you and how that partner, those kinds of partnerships, can be really used or taken advantage of to kind of improve welfare and even conservation.

Speaker 2: 35:05

So yeah, I always encourage um, so we teach a, so we teach an AZA professional development course every year called Animal Welfare, evidence Based Management, and one of the things that I always talk about is encouraging facilities to reach out to their local universities, because those partnerships are just invaluable, like just what comes out of them and what's really nice is for external researchers. Like a lot of times I get questions about well, I don't work in a zoo, but I'd like to do some research at a zoo. How do I go about doing that? And one of the things that the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has done, which has made it very convenient, is actually come up with a universal research form, and so if you're an external scientist looking to do research at AZA facilities, most will now accept this universal form, which means you don't have to fill out 30 different applications to do a multi-institutional study. You fill out the one and send it to the 30 zoos.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Okay, yeah, recently in the summer, I had some experience with that in the context of Linkin Park Zoo and for doing collaborative research there, and I thought that's quite a nice idea, extremely helpful, Super helpful, and really lowering the bar, as you say, to kind of be able to access those larger scale studies. All right, so that's really interesting. So how about we pivot to animal welfare and animal welfare science? So you said earlier on that taking the best possible care of animals has always been an important goal, or maybe the primary goal, for you might want to qualify that with accredited institutions. Maybe that's not the shared goal for all institutions, but it's something that has always been kind of there.

Speaker 1: 36:55

And I think now, from my understanding, at least in academic institutions, animal welfare science is like its own fully fledged field of research now in a way that it probably never was in the past. Field of research now in a way that it probably never was in the past. And I think the other day, when you started your talk about animal welfare, welfare science at modern institutions, I think your first slide was about animal rights and animal welfare, and so maybe we can move on to that. So, because I think it's really important distinction for the rest of this conversation. So what are animal rights? And then what is animal welfare?

Speaker 2: 37:38

So yeah, so a lot of times when I give presentations, I like to start off talking about the difference between animal rights and animal welfare, because I think it is a really important distinction between the two. So when you're talking about animal rights, you're really talking about a philosophy. So all of us, based on our education, our personal beliefs, our religion, the people that we associate with, there's a whole bunch of factors that basically help determine where we fall on a continuum in terms of animal rights. So on one side of that continuum is people have, basically, they believe animals can be used for anything. They can be used for clothing, for food, for entertainment, for education. And then, on the far other side of the continuum, you have people that believe animals shouldn't be used for anything at all, and so, again, based on our personal beliefs, we fall somewhere on that continuum, and so those of us that work in zoos and aquariums probably fall somewhere, usually in the middle of that continuum.

Speaker 2: 38:36

Now, animal welfare, on the other hand, is a science. It's something that can be measured. We can't measure animal welfare directly, but we can measure indicators of animal welfare. And, just like animal rights, animal welfare is also on a continuum, but in this case it goes from poor to what I like to call thriving, and so, measuring those indicators of welfare, or what we call outputs or outcomes, we can determine approximately where an animal might fall on that continuum out maybe outdated, I'm not sure if that's the right word but one of the frameworks for thinking about animal and in some ways it relates to rights.

Speaker 1: 39:14

So there was the five rights and freedoms. Animal rights and freedoms, I suppose, as a framework for how we should think about making sure the animals have the best kind of or it can be avoided the most negative consequences of being in in zoological facilities. So those could be, you know, the freedom from stress and disease, the freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from or I guess to express naturalistic behavior, freedom to escape as well. So but but my understanding from talking to people in the zoo world now is that maybe there's a different way of thinking about those, those. But can you kind of walk through the history of that and how it's influenced the kind of thinking about, um, animal welfare to now?

Speaker 2: 39:58

yeah, so for decades the five freedoms were kind of the gold standard and unfortunately those were kind of minimum criteria or avoiding the negative, as you said. And so years ago I think it was back in 2015, when I was working back at the, or it would have been before that, maybe 2013. It was back when I was at San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research and Greg Vecino and I had just gotten out of an animal welfare meeting and decided that the five freedoms just weren't enough. I mean, those of us that work in zoo and aquariums are always trying to continuously improve, just like the cetacean welfare study, as I talked about earlier. So we actually went back to his office and sat down and came up with what we called the five opportunities to thrive and it's really just putting a more positive spin on things and trying to raise the bar and think of new ways to continue, like I said, continuously improve the welfare of animals.

Speaker 1: 40:54

It's an interesting philosophical switch, though, isn't it? Instead of trying to achieve the minimum like the lowest, let's satisfy the lowest hanging fruit possible. The goal would then be to go well beyond that and try to find ways for the animals to thrive, or flourish, as you said. But so what would be the key kind of differences there and how you would frame it, and how could it lead to actually differences in how we manage the animals?

Speaker 2: 41:19

So, for example, one of them is the opportunity to engage in species appropriate behavior. So really focusing on behavioral diversity and making sure that we're meeting the behavioral needs of animals. Those of you that are listening, if you know me, know that I talk about behavioral diversity quite a bit. For those of you that aren't familiar, behavioral diversity the general idea behind it is that if behavioral diversity is high, we're likely meeting the behavioral needs of the animals, but if it's low, the animals are probably lethargic or stereotyping, both of which can be signs of compromised welfare. So it doesn't guarantee that we're meeting the needs of the animals, but for every additional behavior that we see, it's one less behavior that they might be motivated to perform that they don't have the opportunity to.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Yeah, you know it's, I have a personal anecdote with this too. Yeah, you know it's, I have a personal anecdote with this. During the pandemic we adopted a dog. It was not a rescue, but it was an ex breeder and normally after maybe maybe it's young, like three, four years or something the breeders will want to give up those dogs and so there are agencies that will rescue them from the breeders and so we got one.

Speaker 1: 42:25

It's a miniature schnauzer, super cute, named Pie, was terrified always and had almost no behavioral diversity. So she doesn't play Even still. We've had her for a couple of years now. It's hard to get her to play. We've found some ways. She'll run around and bark at the kids when they're doing circles around the house, but she very much just likes to stay in her bed and doesn't like to explore too much. And so Kayon walks. But one thing I noticed the other day and it's kind of a silly, maybe a biology nerd kind of or a pet lover nerd kind of thing. I noticed that after defecating in the boulevard on a walk she started to kick the back legs. You know as dogs do start burying.

Speaker 1: 43:11

That's a very species typical, almost a fixed action pattern, more or less. Not like they're thinking about it, but it's just part of the animal's behavioral repertoire and she had never done that before and I was kind of over the moon nothing so simple.

Speaker 1: 43:25

But I thought this is, you know, this is, for me it was like a small victory because I felt like something is being unlocked, you know, in the potential of this animal, which you know may seem small. And I don't think my wife fully got it when I said she's kicking, she's burying. Yeah, it didn't really go over that well, but it was kind of a nice moment for me Definitely.

Speaker 2: 43:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:49

So opportunity to express species, typical behaviors. What are maybe some of the other things we might consider then, in opportunities for optimal health, opportunities for choice and control.

Speaker 2: 44:01

Yeah, so there's five opportunities total. I'm probably going to forget a couple of them at this point. Trying to opportunity to self-maintain. Yeah, it's really just like I said really trying to give a framework that focuses on the positive and really raising the bar to make sure, again, that we're just always looking to continuously improve.

Speaker 1: 44:24

Yeah, I want to come back to choice and control in a moment. But first, do you think that this framing has already replaced the idea of the five freedoms? Maybe in different guises depending on the institution, but have we made that switch in animal welfare?

Speaker 2: 44:40

So when you look across the zoo and aquarium industry again primarily looking at accredited zoos and aquariums I think most have adopted a new framework, whether it be the five domains, which is very popular especially in Australia, or the five opportunities to thrive. But I think most facilities have adopted new strategies and frameworks.

Speaker 1: 45:01

Yeah, okay. So going back to choice and control, this is something that absolutely comes up and maybe listeners out there. When you've gone to a zoo, I think maybe one of the clearest examples is you know whether the animals have access to related to the freedom of being able to escape or I forget the exact phrasing of it but places to hide in the habitat, or you know, to access the non-visible parts of the environment, to be out of the human eye, things like that. What are the other kind of examples of providing choice to the animals that you can think of? Or maybe that Brookfield Zoo is really big on?

Speaker 2: 45:44

So I talked a little bit earlier about we did some preference assessments for animals at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, looking at their carnivores, and I think zoos and aquariums really need to start thinking more about individual differences. Just because it's a tiger doesn't mean it's going to have the same preferences as maybe a previous tiger at that institution or facility. And so when you think about choice, it's not. Do we give the animals one or two objects? It's what are the plethora of choices that we can give? Are we thinking about diets? Are we thinking about enrichment?

Speaker 2: 46:26

And then the thing I always like to point out is that choice is one thing, but control is actually a completely different concept, and what we know about control a lot of comes from the human research field. Back years ago there were some really nice studies done where they looked at giving infants control over a mobile of the crib and what they found was that infants that could roll over and touch a button to make the mobile light up and make noises and stuff Um, those infants had laughing and cooing and all those fun sounds, um, throughout the entire study. But infants that were assigned to the control group where the mobile just went off at random times. Um, those uh infants actually stopped that laughing and cooing over time. So it really does demonstrate how important control is, not just for humans, but for non-human animals as well.

Speaker 1: 47:25

So can you put that into, maybe give a concrete example of how you might offer control to an animal in a zoo or an aquarium setting?

Speaker 2: 47:39

So control over their environment. So it's what makes behavior meaningful. So if you take away control, you're basically putting animals in a situation of learned helplessness where their behavior doesn't mean anything. And so giving animals a choice or the option or the ability to choose different locations within a habitat to maintain themselves so if it's hot out can they find shade, If it's cold out can they find sunlight but, yeah, creating environments where it really does make their behavior meaningful.

Speaker 1: 48:14

Okay, okay. So do you mind if I ask you like, maybe, to give the listener some idea of what things might be happening at Brookfield Zoo specifically for in terms of choice and control or even other forms of environmental enrichment?

Speaker 2: 48:39

If you could just pick, like a couple of species and maybe provide an example or two of what kind of programs would exist to kind of improve the welfare of those animals. So one example I can give is we had learned of some abnormal behavior in our gorillas and we wanted to investigate some potential solutions, and one of the things that was brought to our attention was we were the only facility in ACA that allowed 360 degree viewing of our gorillas, and so we conducted a research project where we actually blocked off about 75% of the viewing, and while we didn't see conclusive results in terms of everything being or going in a direction that we would expect if it was providing a more positive experience for the animals, we did see some positive changes, and so, from a management standpoint, we made the final determination that we were going to close it off permanently, and from a choice perspective, it now allows our gorillas to actually get out of view if they have that decision.

Speaker 1: 49:43

It seems like it would be a difficult decision to make. I think you mentioned that you didn't have any complaints ultimately about that. No, we did not.

Speaker 2: 49:56

We actually put up signs saying that, based on research and the best of our knowledge, that this is what's best for the animals and we didn't receive any of you want to be able.

Speaker 1: 50:06

problem at the zoos the animals may be wanting to have some different or have some different interest than the visitors. So I was kind of curious. You know how complicated those decisions might be. If you learn that some aspect of whether it's the environment itself, structure or visitor access, you know when you learn that there may be some challenges with that current situation, do you think it's Brookfield Zoo obviously showed that they can make decisions that might end up being in the animal's best interest. But yeah, maybe more generally, like, what do you think about those kind of conflicts between the different clients of zoos?

Speaker 2: 51:17

So we know from research that if we want to meet our mission as a modern zoological facility, we want to connect people to wildlife and get them excited about conservation, and through research we know the best way to do that is to have them see animals up close and engaged in a variety of species-specific behaviors, and that's always the goal. And engaged in a variety of species-specific behaviors, and that's always the goal is to hopefully accomplish that. However, that said, we're never going to make a decision that jeopardizes the welfare of our animals to meet that goal. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 51:49

All right.

Speaker 1: 51:50

So I want to ask a couple of questions about how we understand welfare, and maybe it's related to the science of it, but the sense that I got from talking with you over this week how we understand welfare and maybe it's related to the science of it, but the sense that I got from talking with you over this week and seeing you present about the range of activities that you're working on is that there's no one size fits all measurement of animal welfare, and you've mentioned it already.

Speaker 1: 52:14

There are different reference values that could be physiological, could be behavioral, could be morphological and, in the best case scenario, you would maybe have a suite of different things that you keep track of. You know, when you're trying to assess how the animals are doing, but at the same time, for various reasons human resources, budget limitations it's not really possible to have all of them, this whole smorgasbord all the time, and so I wonder if you can comment on how should we think about prioritizing, what kinds of assessment tools we should be using and how species specific should that be? Or are there things that apply more generally that you could, you know, kind of use across the board?

Speaker 2: 53:02

It's a great question. So, yeah, I mean it's always considered best practice to use a suite of indicators of welfare. There's no one thing that can answer all of your questions. Basically, in terms of prioritizing, it really probably does come down to the species that you're looking at. While looking at physiology is always a good thing, it can get very expensive very quickly unfortunately.

Speaker 2: 53:27

So if you can find behavioral correlates of different physiological markers, that you can just look at behavior instead of looking at physiology, that might be a good approach to take. Do you have?

Speaker 2: 53:39

examples of that so one of the things we've been looking at is behavioral diversity as an indicator of welfare and consistently we find indirect relationships with cortisol or the cortisol to DHEA ratio. So behavioral diversity may be a good solution to not having to run endocrine values, but, that said, I would always run endocrine if I have the money to be able to do so, and not just rely on the behavior.

Speaker 1: 54:06

Right, okay, yeah, it seems like a big ask to be able to get all of the kinds of information you want, and maybe it's a good place to be thinking about enrichment as well. In my experience and I've read a fair amount of papers in the kind of zoo biology literature, both in, you know, standard peer-reviewed journals, but also the gray literature, and you have a lot I mean, there's so many people invested, I think, in the quality of life of animals at places like zoos and aquariums, and so there's a lot of kind of experimentation and just trying to find different ways of doing things. But what you often find is, you know, maybe those programs are short-lived, you know, maybe they're not done to rigorous scientific standard. So a lot of and in your case, with the gorillas you just mentioned, the results you got from after closing off 75% of the area for viewing were not conclusively like.

Speaker 1: 55:02

This is you know what's happening and so I wonder in in for animal welfare. It's kind of like a I guess we can call it a crisis discipline, in the same way you would call conservation a crisis discipline where of course, you try and create the environments that are sufficient and allow animals to thrive, but at the same time, you're constantly trying to update them to satisfy new knowledge that you get in new situations. So you are constantly trying to respond to these things that you observe and it's very much an applied science and the results should be somehow actionable. And so I wonder if you can maybe comment on what do you do with inconclusive results? How do you decide when some intervention is not only sufficient but looks like it's going to do a lot of heavy lifting towards improving the quality of life?

Speaker 2: 55:54

I think we always want to err on the side of caution. So, in the case of the gorilla study, while all the results weren't going in the direction that we would have expected if it was a positive change for the animals, the fact that we did see some things change we erred on the side of caution and made the permanent solution, and I think zoos and aquariums. I think that's the approach that zoos and aquariums need to take.

Speaker 1: 56:17

I think that's the approach that zoos and aquariums need to take, until we can find a perfect solution, going with what's best at that time is what's going to be best for the animals. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about behavioral stereotypy. So this is probably most of the listeners will be familiar with it. You've all seen polar bears pacing back and forth in their habitat as a sign of a kind of response to some kind of stressor.

Speaker 1: 56:43

We just came from the Japan Monkey Center this morning where we looked at some of the animals doing stereotypical head-rolling behavior, for example. And it's just something that a visitor to a zoo is you know, not everywhere, but it's common enough that probably most people have seen it and from a zoo is you know, not everywhere, but it's common enough that probably most people have seen it. And from a scientific perspective, and I think for a zoo management perspective, not having those behaviors is better than having them, because they typically indicate that at least something could be improved, depending, of course, on the history of the individual that you have. But also, having stereotypical behaviors doesn't necessarily mean that the animals doing them are in the worst possible condition. So how should we currently think about stereotypical behavior when we see it?

Speaker 2: 57:30

So stereotypic behavior is not always linked to a negative situation. I think we still have a lot to learn about stereotypic behavior in general, but I think the important take home is that anytime you have an animal engaged in stereotypic behavior, trying to figure out the root cause or what's the motivation or what's driving that behavior and sometimes it might be that the animal had a poor development early on in life and there could be nothing absolutely wrong in their current environment. So just having an understanding that it's not always linked to a negative situation, but always trying to figure out if the behavior that you're observing is happening because of the current situation.

Speaker 1: 58:15

I remember. So I teach this zoo biology class to undergraduates at Kyoto University and one of the days we have a practical exercise at Kyoto City Zoo and, you know, often the students are confronted with animals that would be engaging in some form of stereotypy, some form of stereotypy. And I've received comments from students who at that point have already had like two full days of discussions and lectures about. You know so much about zoos and facilities and science behind what's happening there and the ethics, and they often are listening to the comments of the general public, and so there was an elephant that engages in, sometimes engages in some stereotypical head bobbing.

Speaker 1: 58:59

That's one of the types of stereotypies that elephants can develop. And listening to a family or something you know next to them, the student noticed that they were you know the kind of comments that were being made by the family was kind of negative in the sense that, oh, that's a crazy elephant or something you know like, in the sense that, oh, that's a crazy elephant or something you know like. So it seems like it can have some negative influence on the visitor's perception as well. And so I wonder about education, educating visitors like how much focus should zoos have on? And this is should or shouldn't, but maybe the open question of do you think it's really important to talk to the public about these kinds of behaviors in a way that helps them understand the problem well, that itself might kind of change the way they view having those animals there.

Speaker 2: 59:50

Yeah. So one of the easiest studies I've ever done in my life. We recorded 10 second video clips of a tiger pacing and a tiger resting in the exact same location. So exact same animal, exact same location within the habitat. Just the change in the behavior, and we randomly assigned people to watch one of the two videos. And seeing a tiger pace for 10 seconds in a video significantly reduced their perception of the level of care and welfare that that animal received, but also, importantly, it reduced their interest in getting involved in conservation. And so for zoos to meet their mission and get people excited about conservation again, stereotypic behavior is not always linked to a negative situation, but anytime visitors see that it can have a negative impact on your mission.

Speaker 1: 1:00:37

But anytime visitors see that it can have a negative impact on your mission. Just that description of that study made me wonder if you have any pet studies that you've done that you find really fascinating or fun to have done at the moment.

Speaker 2: 1:00:56

So you've talked about a few of years ago where we looked at what's the difference between an in-person experience versus a video experience, and so we randomly sampled, from our membership at the Brookfield Zoo, the household members and asked them if they'd be willing to participate in a study.

Speaker 2: 1:01:18

And people were assigned to one of three conditions. The first condition was they got to sit in front of a glass window and have an up-close personal experience with a polar bear training session. We recorded those sessions and group two got to see a video of the exact same thing. And group three was our control and they stared at a picture of one of our animal care staff members and got to hear the same audio. And what we found was that the in-person experience people retained more knowledge, they had a better experience overall, they had more empathy towards wild polar bears and they were more excited about getting involved in conservation compared to the control. And we didn't see any of those same changes with the video. So it was just kind of a one-off, kind of fun little study, but important to demonstrate that those in-person experiences, those up-close experiences, are really what's important from a zoological mission standpoint.

Speaker 1: 1:02:10

Yeah, you hear that a lot. I think people and I think we've experienced I feel like I've experienced that myself. I mean, as an animal scientist and wildlife biologist, I feel like my early experience is going to places like zoos were probably shaping. You know this kind of interest I have in wildlife, but I don't have a counterfactual and I think one of the challenges zoos have is communicating or following or tracking the behavior of those individuals after they've left the zoo, Right? So do you, what is your perspective on that?

Speaker 1: 1:02:47

Do you think that these, whether they're self reports of behavior change or more interest in conservation and welfare welfare or do you think? There's a study that I often teach my zoology students is about the don't palm us off campaign that was done in Australia for trying to raise awareness about oil palm and the destruction of rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra to conserve or to help conservation of orangutans, and they did some really impressive follow-ups and it seemed like there was some long-term impacts. But a lot of it's self-reported, so it's hard to access whether or not people's behavior does change, and so I wonder if you have any ideas about that or how should we be thinking about that?

Speaker 2: 1:03:37

It is really difficult because obviously you can't follow people around and see if they actually change their behavior. So most of it is based on self-report. So for some of my graduate work we looked at the impact of dolphin education programs the Dolphin Shows, dolphin interaction programs and what the impact was on people. In short term we saw increases in knowledge, attitudes and interest in conservation. And then we actually did a three-month follow-up to see if any of their behaviors had changed. And again, it's self-reported, but they did report in engaging in more conservation-related behaviors three months following the program. So I think we have we have to go with what we have.

Speaker 2: 1:04:22

I mean, like I said, we can't follow people around and see if they're actually changing their behavior, and I would like to hope that people are being honest when they report that they are doing these things based on what we're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 1:04:34

It was funny we did a. I had an intern here some years ago and she was very passionate about conservation, biodiversity and we set her up doing some visitor surveys at the Japan Monkey Center with in collaboration with the staff there At the time that they were doing the slow loris conservation program. They had. They have a bunch of confiscated slow lorises for confiscated from the pet trade in Japan. Unfortunately, japan is a place where having slow lorises as a pet is still relatively popular, so we have this problem.

Speaker 1: 1:05:06

But the Japan Monkey Center collected a bunch of them and then created this conservation center where they could take people on a tour so they would have a lecture first in the lecture hall and then move to the area where the animals were being housed and they would get this, you know, guided tour by the keeping staff and learn about the conservation.

Speaker 1: 1:05:24

And so we wanted to piggyback on that and do a little visitor study about kind of conservation knowledge in general, species, typical knowledge and knowledge about primates. And so we had that, those control groups of people who were on the tour and who were not on the tour and just looking at these differences. But the one thing we had hoped to do was have a follow-up study. So we had the plan three months later to do a follow-up, but the total number of participants we had was in the range of 100 to 200. And in our follow-up surveys we had an end of two and in our follow-up surveys we had an N of two. And so, yeah, I know from firsthand experience it's very hard to track, because once people leave the gates it may be out of mind as well.

Speaker 2: 1:06:08

Yeah, it can be extremely difficult. First is getting email address or phone number or whatever it is to be able to do that follow-up work, but then actually having them respond to you is a whole other beast, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:06:21

I guess if you have membership it might be a bit easier for people who are. You can tap into the kind of membership that you have.

Speaker 2: 1:06:27

Yeah, I mean for, like the Brookfield Zoo's, family memberships are a great resource in terms of collecting information, but that doesn't give you the full perspective of the non-visitor or the non-membership.

Speaker 1: 1:06:42

Yeah, and the non-visitor, of course, which is even less likely to be.

Speaker 1: 1:06:46

Yeah, so many different spheres that are hard to access. So maybe just to kind of get towards closing this interview out, I wanted to ask you about AZA and WAZA because one because you've been involved for many years and working on developing some programs through it I believe by the end of 2023, wasa has kind of mandated that all members have in place some kind of animal welfare monitoring and assessment strategy or protocol as a way to ensure that we're all having due diligence. Maybe it'll look different depending on the institution they're at, but at least it seems like those accrediting and organizing organizations that's a funny word to put back to back yeah, accrediting or kind of higher level institutions seem to be putting like a big focus on this at the moment, and so maybe you could talk about that. So first, this mandate for WASA in 2023 and kind of how you, through AZA, are thinking about expanding or improving how that can be done across institutions.

Speaker 2: 1:08:08

Yeah, so it's a pretty ambitious goal, but all member associations of WASA by the end of 2023, need to have a welfare monitoring program in place, and so it's all being approved by WASA. So, like I said, a very ambitious project, but critically important so that we can hopefully guarantee, or hopefully ensure, that all facilities are doing what's best for the animals under their professional care are doing what's best for the animals under their professional care.

Speaker 2: 1:08:40

Back in 2017, aza made it mandatory for all AZA member institutions to have a welfare monitoring program. Now, all of these facilities aren't required to do exactly the same thing. It's up to them to decide what's best based on the resources that they have available to them, but I think it's critical that zoo and aquariums continue to move forward on this front.

Speaker 1: 1:09:04

So what kind of activities are you specifically involved in through AZA for that purpose?

Speaker 2: 1:09:10

So, right now. I am currently an advisor to the Animal Welfare Committee for AZA and I'm also on the Board of Ethics and Animal Welfare for WASA.

Speaker 1: 1:09:23

Okay, Okay, and so do you see. I think AZA recently just had a call for a couple of new animal welfare specialists. How big is AZA as an organization like staffed?

Speaker 2: 1:09:38

I don't know the exact number to, to be honest, off the top of my head, but within the conservation and animal welfare side of things, they've got multiple staff. Most recently they hired two positions which are calling. I don't know the exact titles, but they're focused on animal wellbeing and those two positions will focus entirely on that which really does raise the bar for AZA issues.

Speaker 1: 1:10:21

That surrounds conservation work based on ex-situ conservation work and its interaction with in-situ conservation work, but the idea that we can or should keep small populations at places like zoos and aquariums for genetics management, to increase population size as a metapopulation that can eventually, if needed, move back into natural habitats. So the ethics behind this are about species preservation, but while you have the animals there, welfare is also really important. However, sometimes you put and this is where maybe rights versus welfare is pitted directly against each other. So let's take the example of the black-footed ferret conservation work, where black-footed ferrets are carnivores. So in order to train them to be able to be successful wild black-footed ferrets, they have to learn how to hunt, and to learn how to hunt in an environment that's provided by places like zoos, you would have to provide the prey, and so that's often marmots or prairie dogs or animals of that nature, and so you have this direct competition. Competition is the wrong word, but you're putting the value of one life over the value of another for species preservation. So if you were, let's say, a pure animal rights side, all being equal, if you're like a pure utilitarian, then that would not necessarily be so acceptable because you're sacrificing one for the good of the other.

Speaker 1: 1:11:58

I'm not sure how it fits in with welfare. Maybe life no life is not the distinguishing character from a welfare perspective, as long as you're providing good welfare opportunities for the animal when it's alive. But this is a super long way of asking you how do you think about that interplay between the ethics around zoos for conservation and for animal rights and welfare Welfare, sorry, in context like that, or do you think about that much? I don't know if it's something that you're involved with in any way, so yeah, so.

Speaker 2: 1:12:33

I've never worked with black-footed ferrets so I really couldn't comment on that specifically. But from an animal welfare standpoint, anytime we are using live prey, in any situation, whether it's part of a conservation, reintroduction program or not, you want to make sure that even that live prey has the best life possible until the time that it becomes prey, and so that's kind of how we look at it.

Speaker 1: 1:13:01

This has become really interesting to me because there's also this emerging philosophy of compassionate conservation, the idea that even though we're working towards the conservation of some species, which may have negative impacts on others, working towards the conservation of some species which may have negative impacts on others, maybe you should keep that in mind so that we're valuing equally the lives of all the species that are involved in some interaction, which seems quite complicated, and my group has recently started working on invasive species in an island in southern Japan. Invasive raccoon dogs and raccoon dogs are kind of an iconic animal in Japan. You see them kind of everywhere in the places where they're native and they've become these porcelain kind of statues outside of restaurants, patting their bellies, as you know, kind of welcoming and signs of good food. But in places where they may be invasive they're actually quite destructive. So they compete with local carnivores. They prey, predate on various other birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, many of them endangered. And so people who care about conservation are often the same people that care about animal welfare or dabble into animal rights.

Speaker 1: 1:14:18

You said earlier that people who work in zoos might be in the middle of the spectrum on animal rights because you care deeply about the animals, but you're not going as far as to say none should ever be in anywhere except where they naturally belong.

Speaker 1: 1:14:33

I guess maybe the main question that comes out of that is how could or how should a zoo and it would be related to when you do live feeding, because a lot of people, a lot of the public, won't appreciate live feedings. Maybe they can stomach having fish fed to tigers or to otters or to penguins, even live fish, but as soon as you bring out a bunny to feed to some large carnivore, I think a lot of people, that's where they would draw the line. And so we naturally put some kind of value on certain species over others. We tend, I think, to do that and maybe things that are closer to us, we might feel more comfortable with mammals than birds, birds than reptiles, that sort of reptiles than amphibians. I'm not sure, but I wonder if there's a place for zoos to help us think about the ethics of how humans and animals interact.

Speaker 2: 1:15:33

I think, the role zoos can play in terms of thinking about wildlife is the ability to celebrate all wildlife, so not just the charismatic megata fauna, but what about the cockroaches? So I think that's where zoos can play a critical role in terms of really helping our visitors to connect with all species of wildlife.

Speaker 1: 1:15:55

So are you saying that the next exhibit at Brookfield Zoo is going to be the cockroach?

Speaker 2: 1:15:58

We already have one. You've got them. Yeah, Hissing cockroaches there. They're pretty popular with all species of wildlife.

Speaker 1: 1:16:02

So are you saying that the next exhibit at Brookfield Zoo is going to be the cockroach? We already have one. You've got them. Yeah, hissing cockroaches there, they're pretty popular, right, yeah, yeah. And how do you do you know? Have you seen people's reactions to them? I personally have not. Okay, it's maybe a tough sell for some people, but fascinating, fascinating animal. Well, lance, is there anything that maybe you want to add on or something you want to bring up that we haven't covered before? We kind of shut this down.

Speaker 2: 1:16:26

I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 1:16:28

It's pretty wide-ranging there. Covered a lot, okay, well, thank you so much for joining me on the PrimiCast.

Speaker 2: 1:16:35

Thank you for having me.