Analysing Behaviour
How do you analyse your animal's behaviour?
Anecdotal evidence? Wear and tear in the enclosure to indicate usage? Assumptions?
We all have a rough idea of how an animal spends their day, using tools like the above. But when it comes to being able to make objective, factual statements you need to be able to provide evidence to support them. After all, we make assessments based on fact, not feeling.
The best way to get an overall view of an individual's behaviour is to perform ethograms. An ethogram is a collection of data around how an animal spends it's time and what behaviours it is performing.
The beauty of an ethogram is that you can create them, therefore controlling what data you are gathering. If you only want to assess how regularly your individual is performing certain behaviours, that's all you have to include. If you want an overall view of how they budget their time, you can include more options and widen those parameters. Click here to see an example of a general ethogram with a large variety of behaviours.
Once you have chosen what behaviours to include, you need to chose what type of sampling method you will use. There are 2 types, continuous and instantaneous. Typically, both are best done in intervals of 15 minutes, and repeated in different weather, time of day and time of year, to best accurately represent your animal in all manner of situations.
Continuous involves recording what the animal is doing for the length of time they're doing it. For example; travelling for 30 seconds, resting for 79 seconds, self-grooming for 27 seconds etc until the 15 minutes is complete.
Instantaneous involves recording at the top of every minute. What the animal being observed is doing in that moment. If the animal has been running around for the last 59 seconds and is standing still at the start of the next minute still record standing still.
Both have their benefits and drawbacks. continuous sampling provides the most complete and accurate data and it also allows the observation of seldom expressed behaviours and events with short duration; (2) instantaneous sampling can provide accurate measurement in terms of both frequency and duration, especially at short scan intervals, with shorter intervals providing the most accurate results, comparable with continuous sampling (Manfre et al, 2024).
When fitting in performing an ethogram into the busy schedule of a keeper, instantaneous tends to be more popular due to its higher accuracy over short intervals. The more ethograms you can perform, the better results you will have for analysis.
Once you have your data, you can begin to see what gaps you can aim to fill in your behaviour repertoire. You can then begin discussions with Team Leaders, Vets and Managers on how best to do this. It also opens up the question of to provide enrichment or to train a behaviour, of course the two are not mutually exclusive and you may find a way to use both.
When performing an ethogram at NZA, check in with SD, KB and the training committee. We have set up a programme called 'ZooMonitor' that helps us easily create ethograms and produces the data in a digestible form for us. Essentially, it makes it way easier and faster for us to use the results!