Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In the wild, giraffes spend most of their day foraging and thus are most commonly
found on the savannah where there is plenty of greenery. They continuously move
to meet their daily nutritional need and can move over up to 437 km2
. Their diet is
rich in fibre and consists mostly of leaves, twigs and bark. Typically, the giraffe
spends mornings and evenings foraging and ruminating during the hottest part of
the day. The social structure in the giraffe herd is a fission-fusion system, where
individuals come and go on a daily basis. It is difficult to reconstruct a natural life
for giraffes in captivity, as limitations in form of space is a major problem. From
practical and economical aspects, it is difficult to recreate their natural diet as well.
Instead, captive giraffes are generally fed with feed appropriate for our
domesticated ruminants. However, the majority of zoos strive toward letting captive
animals perform as many natural behaviors as possible. The possibility to perform
natural behavior tends to reduce the risk of animals developing stereotypic
behavior. Furthermore, studies have shown that the size of the enclosure also has
an impact on the time captive giraffes spend ruminating and exhibit locomotive
behavior. This study was conducted to examine how access to an outdoor area
affected the occurrence of natural and stereotypic behavior in giraffes at Borås zoo,
Sweden. The giraffes were observed during two treatments, one with access to the
outdoor area and one without, in order to collect data which later were compared.
The results suggested that occurrence of natural and stereotypic behavior is related
to the possibility to access an outdoor area. When the giraffes had access to the
outdoor enclosure, the prevalence of stereotypies decreased, whilst the prevalence
of natural behavior increased. These findings suggest that outdoor access has an
impact on the behavior of the captive giraffe, but more studies need to be conducted
to investigate whether it is possible to apply these findings to giraffes in other zoos.