Augustine Lauren, Baskir Eli, Kozlowski Corinne P, Hammack Stephen, Elden Justin, Wanner Mark D, Franklin Ashley D, Powell David M
Saint Louis Zoo, 1 Government Drive, Saint Louis, MO 63116, USA.
Smithsonian National Zoological Park, 3001 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2022 Feb 3;12(3):373. doi: 10.3390/ani12030373.
Modern herpetoculture has seen a rise in welfare-related habitat modifications, although ethologically-informed enclosure design and evidence-based husbandry are lacking. The diversity that exists within snakes complicates standardizing snake welfare assessment tools and evaluation techniques. Utilizing behavioral indicators in conjunction with physiological measures, such as fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations, could aid in the validation of evidence-based metrics for evaluating snake welfare. We increased habitat cleaning, to identify behavioral or physiological indicators that might indicate heightened arousal in snakes as a response to the disturbance. While glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations increased significantly during a period of increased disturbance, this increase was not associated with a significant increase in tongue-flicking, a behavior previously associated with arousal in snakes. Locomotion behavior and the proportion of time spent exposed were also not affected by more frequent habitat cleaning. These results demonstrate the need to further investigate the behavioral and physiological responses of snakes to different aspects of animal care at a species and individual level. They also highlight the need to collect baseline behavioral and physiological data for animals, in order to make meaningful comparisons when evaluating changes in animal care.
现代爬虫养殖中，与福利相关的栖息地改造有所增加，不过缺乏基于行为学的饲养环境设计和循证饲养方法。蛇类的多样性使得标准化蛇类福利评估工具和评估技术变得复杂。结合行为指标与生理指标（如粪便糖皮质激素代谢物浓度），有助于验证用于评估蛇类福利的循证指标。我们增加了栖息地清洁次数，以确定可能表明蛇因受到干扰而兴奋度提高的行为或生理指标。虽然在干扰增加期间糖皮质激素代谢物浓度显著上升，但这种增加与吐舌频率的显著增加并无关联，吐舌是一种先前被认为与蛇类兴奋有关的行为。运动行为以及暴露在外的时间比例也未因更频繁的栖息地清洁而受到影响。这些结果表明，有必要在物种和个体层面进一步研究蛇类对动物护理不同方面的行为和生理反应。它们还强调了为动物收集行为和生理基线数据的必要性，以便在评估动物护理变化时进行有意义的比较。
