Davey Gareth
Psychology Department, University of Chester, Chester, UK.
J Appl Anim Welf Sci. 2006;9(3):249-56. doi: 10.1207/s15327604jaws0903_7.
A methodological difficulty facing welfare research on nonhuman animals in the zoo is the large number of uncontrolled variables due to variation within and between study sites. Zoo visitors act as uncontrolled variables, with number, density, size, and behavior constantly changing. This is worrisome because previous research linked visitor variables to animal behavioral changes indicative of stress. There are implications for research design: Studies not accounting for visitors' effect on animal welfare risk confounding (visitor) variables distorting their findings. Zoos need methods to measure and minimize effects of visitor behavior and to ensure that there are no hidden variables in research models. This article identifies a previously unreported variable--hourly variation (decrease) in visitor interest--that may impinge on animal welfare and validates a methodology for measuring it. That visitor interest wanes across the course of the day has important implications for animal welfare management; visitor effects on animal welfare are likely to occur, or intensify, during the morning or in earlier visits when visitor interest is greatest. This article discusses this issue and possible solutions to reduce visitor effects on animal well-being.
动物园中针对非人类动物的福利研究面临的一个方法学难题是，由于研究地点内部和之间的差异，存在大量无法控制的变量。动物园游客就是无法控制的变量，其数量、密度、规模和行为不断变化。这令人担忧，因为先前的研究将游客变量与表明压力的动物行为变化联系起来。这对研究设计有影响：未考虑游客对动物福利影响的研究有混淆（游客）变量从而扭曲研究结果的风险。动物园需要有方法来衡量并尽量减少游客行为的影响，并确保研究模型中不存在隐藏变量。本文识别出一个此前未报告的变量——游客兴趣的每小时变化（下降）——这可能会影响动物福利，并验证了一种测量该变量的方法。游客兴趣在一天中逐渐减弱，这对动物福利管理具有重要意义；游客对动物福利的影响很可能在上午或较早的参观时段出现或加剧，因为此时游客兴趣最为浓厚。本文讨论了这个问题以及减少游客对动物福祉影响的可能解决方案。
