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Zoo‐housed mammals do not avoid giving birth on weekends
Zoo Biology ( IF 1.2 ) Pub Date : 2020-09-21 , DOI: 10.1002/zoo.21571
Geoff Hosey 1 , Samantha J Ward 2 , Amanda Ferguson 3 , Hannah Jenkins 3 , Sonya P Hill 4
Affiliation  

There is evidence that zoo visitor presence can influence the behaviour and, in some cases, adrenal response of zoo animals, and can sometimes compromise animal welfare. In some laboratory studies, significantly more primate births have been reported on weekends, when fewer people are working there, compared with weekdays when staffing levels are at their highest. Here, we investigate whether there is evidence of a "weekend effect" on births in zoo animals as a result of visitor numbers. Unlike laboratories, zoos are typically busier with visitors on weekends than on weekdays, although staffing levels remain fairly consistent across days of the week. If zoo animal parturition is sensitive to human presence, then fewer births would be expected on weekends compared with weekdays. We tested this using birth data and visitor numbers on the entrance gate from zoo records across 16 species representing artiodactyls, perissodactyls, carnivores and primates at four British zoos, to see whether there is an association between mean daily birth rates and average visitor numbers. We predict that, if there is a visitor effect, daily births should be lower on weekends than weekdays and should correlate with mean daily visitor numbers. Results showed that births for all 16 species were randomly distributed through the week, and there was no significant decline in births on weekends. We conclude that the "weekend effect", if such a thing exists, does not appear to be a feature of zoo births, suggesting that elevated weekend visitor numbers are not sufficiently stressful to trigger delayed parturition.

中文翻译:

动物园饲养的哺乳动物不会避免在周末分娩

有证据表明,动物园游客的存在会影响动物园动物的行为,在某些情况下还会影响它们的肾上腺反应,有时还会损害动物福利。在一些实验室研究中,与工作人员水平最高的工作日相比,周末报告的灵长类动物出生人数明显更多,因为在那里工作的人较少。在这里,我们调查是否有证据表明游客人数对动物园动物的出生产生了“周末效应”。与实验室不同,动物园通常在周末比工作日更忙于接待游客,尽管一周中的几天内人员配备水平保持相当一致。如果动物园动物的分娩对人类的存在很敏感,那么与工作日相比,周末的出生人数预计会减少。我们使用来自动物园记录的出生数据和入口处的访客人数进行了测试,这些动物代表了四个英国动物园的偶蹄动物、奇蹄动物、食肉动物和灵长类动物,以查看平均每日出生率和平均访客人数之间是否存在关联。我们预测,如果存在访客效应,周末的每日出生人数应该低于工作日,并且应该与每日平均访客人数相关。结果显示,所有 16 种物种的出生数在一周内随机分布,周末出生数没有显着下降。我们的结论是,“周末效应”(如果存在这种情况)似乎不是动物园出生的特征,这表明周末游客数量的增加不足以引发延迟分娩。
更新日期:2020-09-21
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