Essay On Environmental Enrichment

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Environmental Enrichment as a concept does not seem to be have a standard definition. It is a concept that has evolved and matured over the last 100 years at least, and is premised on the idea that providing captive animals with a variable environment enhances their behavioural flexibility in response to the variable environment this has positive physical and mental health or he animals (Davis, 2015). It is evident in many zoos globally including old South African zoos that still have their yesteryear enclosures, that zoos were more like places of amusement that did not have a conceptualisation of what the needs of the animals were. They were not the places of public education, conservation, research and entertainment we know today. Charles…show more content…
His studies of rhesus monkeys reared in restricted environments revealed significant behavioural deficits including reduced exploratory, communicative, emotional, sexual, and maternal behaviours. He also found that primates raised in barren laboratories were more likely to develop aberrant behaviours such as “floating arm syndrome” therefore Modifications to the environment such as adding devices with which the animals could interact, reduced such aberrant behaviours. (Young,…show more content…
Environmental enrichment as a concept does not have a specific meaning (Young, 2010), it however broadly it taps into variability of the physical environment of an animal. The inherent variability of the environment means animals may be confronted with uncertainty surrounding the presence of food resources at a given location or time (Bonnie et al, 2012). The depravity of a captive environment lacks the variability that would otherwise be inherent in a natural habitat of an animal. In a variable environment natural selection would favour individuals that can adjust their behaviour as a response to the variability of the environment (Bonnie et al,
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