Narshi Tanya M, Free Danielle, Justice William S M, Smith Sarah Jayne, Wolfensohn Sarah
Institute of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
Marwell Wildlife, Colden Common, Winchester SO21 1JH, UK.
Animals (Basel). 2022 Jun 29;12(13):1675. doi: 10.3390/ani12131675.
Consumer demand for invertebrates is on the rise as their numbers in the wild dwindle. However, with the growing conservation efforts of modern zoos and aquariums, and evidence from over 300 studies showing that invertebrates are capable of sentience, public interest, and moral concern for welfare of invertebrates have increased. The challenge for zoos and aquariums is in developing an objective and repeatable method for evaluating welfare that can be applied to invertebrates in zoological collections. Recently introduced into zoological collection management is the Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG). The AWAG helps to identify negative and positive welfare states, through assessing animal- and environmental-based indicators to make changes that lead to a better quality of life. Originally developed for the assessment of laboratory primates, the system has been successfully adapted to assess a variety of taxa across different environments, facilitated by the development of cloud-based software. In this study, the AWAG has been adapted to assess the cumulative lifetime experience of captive decapods and cephalopods at two different institutions, Marwell Zoo and National Marine Aquarium. This study has provided further evidence that the AWAG is adaptable and demonstrates the first time any objective scoring system has been successfully adapted for use in invertebrates. Through graphical representation, the results show that the AWAG identifies changes in welfare scores that can be attributed to specific events and can be used to predict the future vulnerability of species to welfare changes and suggest alternative management methods. This monitoring tool provides a versatile method of implementing practical welfare monitoring in zoos and aquariums.
随着野生无脊椎动物数量的减少，消费者对它们的需求却在上升。然而，随着现代动物园和水族馆保护力度的不断加大，以及300多项研究表明无脊椎动物具有感知能力的证据，公众对无脊椎动物的兴趣以及对其福利的道德关注有所增加。动物园和水族馆面临的挑战在于开发一种客观且可重复的福利评估方法，该方法可应用于动物园馆藏中的无脊椎动物。动物福利评估网格（AWAG）最近被引入到动物园馆藏管理中。AWAG通过评估基于动物和环境的指标来识别负面和正面的福利状态，从而做出能够提升生活质量的改变。该系统最初是为评估实验室灵长类动物而开发的，在基于云的软件的推动下，已成功适用于评估不同环境中的各种分类群。在这项研究中，AWAG已被调整用于评估马尔韦尔动物园和国家海洋水族馆这两个不同机构中圈养十足目动物和头足类动物的累积终生经历。这项研究进一步证明了AWAG具有适应性，并首次展示了任何客观评分系统已成功适用于无脊椎动物。通过图形展示，结果表明AWAG能够识别可归因于特定事件的福利评分变化，并可用于预测物种未来对福利变化的脆弱性，并提出替代管理方法。这种监测工具为在动物园和水族馆中实施实际的福利监测提供了一种通用方法。
