{"id":109,"date":"2020-07-15T18:37:53","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T17:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zoosnippets.com\/?p=109"},"modified":"2021-03-10T22:23:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T21:23:48","slug":"a-need-for-appropriate-challenge-in-environmental-enrichment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoosnippets.com\/post\/a-need-for-appropriate-challenge-in-environmental-enrichment","title":{"rendered":"A Need For Appropriate Challenge In Environmental Enrichment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagine a life without challenges: every day the same routine, without any new experience, new information, same food prepared in the same way. A life without opportunities or problems for you to overcome. Such a life would be rather dull and boring, lacking the satisfaction of personal development and growth. Could this also be the case for animals? Animals living in the wild have to face many challenges. Think of predation, social competition or finding a partner to produce offspring. Also, the environment itself set many challenges for the animals: weather, illness, and food and water availability. On the contrary, animals in captivity often live in an environment which is simple, predictable and monotonous. Challenges are limited and infrequently or not present at all. You might expect that it is relaxed for the animal and that it can enjoy its life. But is it? Might animals suffer from a lack of challenge in their life?\u00a0In this article, I want to accentuate the importance of ‘appropriate’ challenge in environmental enrichment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t

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  1. How do animals deal with challenges?\u00a0<\/a>
  2. Competence and agency<\/a>
  3. Problem-solving, exploration and play<\/a>
  4. How does providing challenge improve animal welfare?<\/a>
  5. What happens if we do not give enough challenge?\u00a0<\/a>
  6. What is and how to apply appropriate challenge in zoos?<\/a>
  7. To summarize<\/a>
  8. Further reading<\/a>
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    How do animals deal with challenges? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Whereas social stress, hunger and illness are serious challenges in the life of an animal, it is out of focus when talking about environmental enrichment. Proper nutrition and veterinary care should prevent or cure these challenges, and these challenges are pretty complex, and often not ethical or acceptable, to recreate in captive environments. Also, in zoos, we try to house animals in natural social situations. In this article, we focus on the challenges induced by novelty. But how do animals deal with challenges? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When we turn to wild animals, we see that they are adapted to turn natural challenges into opportunities by mastering a specific task, or by flexibility in behavioural response. For an animal to deal with such a challenge is centred around two key concepts: Competence and agency. Let me explain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Competence and agency<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Competence is defined as the whole array of cognitive and behavioural experience, tools and strategies that an animal use at any moment to deal with novel challenges when they arise. They are partly genetically inherited from generation to generation. But on the other hand, animals learn them through interaction with the environment. It is a result of reactions to external events. However, if competence is only used when reacting to an external event, an animal’s life would be perilous. It would be a matter of luck to master skills and learn to deal with the challenge because it hasn’t learned these skills and experience yet. If it goes wrong or the wrong choices are made (because of lack of competence), it could be detrimental to its welfare or even game over. But how does an animal learn to cope with these challenges then? It may be too late to start looking for a solution when you are upfront the challenge, so it’s worthwhile that an animal invests in his future by exposing itself to a degree of risk and spend time and energy to develop these abilities and experience: agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Agency is defined as that an animal actively engages with the environment with the main purpose of gathering knowledge and enhancing its skills and abilities for future use. It is the intrinsic tendency to behave actively beyond the degree of the current needs and to widen their range of competencies. The animal needs to learn to become a master and to improve their coping abilities to novelty. You could say that agency is the procedural (more proactive) aspect and competence the functional (more reactive) aspect to prepare and resolve challenges. Agency is intrinsically motivated. We can see it with what we termed as contrafreeloading<\/a>. Many animals do choose to make an effort to obtain food or water, even if the same type of food or quality of water is also freely available. When you give meerkats a choice between mealworms in a dish and mealworms in an enrichment device, it will often choose to engage with the enrichment instead of eating straight from the food bowl. Furthermore, it is even stated that animals enjoy the process of learning, too. It is reinforcing for animals to develop in themself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    The relation between the level of challenges and level of skills (source: \u0160pinka and Wemelsfelder, 2011)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Problem-solving, exploration and play<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Prominent facets of agency and competence are the behaviours problem-solving, exploration and play. When known behavioural solutions no longer work to attain a goal, in captivity mostly seen in obtaining food, problem-solving comes into action. Toates (2004) describes problem-solving as modifying appetitive behaviours, as well as engage higher levels of cognition control and use memories of the animal’s own past action, successes and failures to attain its goal. Multiple research shows that it also appears to have longer-term beneficial consequences for the ability to cope with the animal’s environment (Ernst et al., 2005; Puppe et al., 2007; Bell et al., 2009). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Exploration is behaviour directly aimed at gathering information on the environment. When we place an animal in a new environment, even when features are present that are known to the animal (like its normal food, toys, etc.) it will likely first move around inspecting all kinds of stimuli in this environment. It is even seen that animals actively seek for novel stimuli, where it visits places where it can expect novel objects (Wood-Gush and Vestergaard, 1991). The information primacy theory<\/a>, which describes the need for information gathering to expand its knowledge to increase understanding and survival, explains this phenomenon. The motivation for exploration, also labelled as ‘curiosity drive’, probably evolved because of the need to reduce uncertainties in the environment and bring crucial advantages for future events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Play, as \u0160pinka et al. (2001) suggest, has a significant function in training for unexpected situations and mishaps. With play, an animal can practice in a known environment how to handle situations when animals lose control or forces disturb their routine. So play behaviour represents an important role in developing competence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How does providing challenge improve animal welfare?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    How does this improve animal welfare, or in other words, why do animals need challenges? As illustrated above, creating challenges in captive environments create opportunities to express agency and develop competence. This process of excepting challenges is suggested to be rewarding and enjoyed by the animal in a certain length, like the concept of contrafreeloading. The interaction between perceived challenge and skills, which Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi (1996) labelled as ‘flow’, chase each other. If the level of challenge is higher than the level of skill, it will try to learn new skills. If skills are higher than the challenge, the animal will seek more challenge. Expression of agency seems to be self-rewarding for an animal as well. In addition, as stated above, competence and exploration increase coping abilities to novel situations and environments. Furthermore, increased opportunities to challenges increase levels of interaction and mobility, which likely have direct physical benefits, such as stronger muscles, higher endurance, or better balance, but also improve long-term physical health and fitness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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