If you’re ever at a zoo and you happen to spot a wild cat with enormous ears and super long legs that make it look like it’s walking on stilts, then you’re probably looking at a serval. The Leptailurus Serval is a wild cat from the sub-Saharan region of Africa. These beautiful cats use their long, powerful legs for jumping and stalking their prey in tall grasses. When a serval has spotted a potential meal hiding in the tall grass, it will sneak up on it, then launch itself into the air like a rocket as it pounces down on its prey. These cats are also often in zoos since they are an ideal ambassador for wild cats and raising awareness on the animal trade. A study at Weribee Open Range Zoo in Victoria, Australia was conducted to determine if increasing public encounters led to more positive behaviors and better welfare in captive servals. Four different treatments were used which involved interactive presentations, behind-the-scenes (BTS) encounters, both presentations and BTS combined, or no interactions at all for comparison. Pacing was the abnormal behavior the researchers used to generally indicate negative welfare in servals during the experiment.
For the experiment, two female servals were housed off public display in an open yard and three adjacent pens. Both females had been in the current program involving a daily presentation and BTS encounter with visitors. For presentations, the maximum people allowed were 250 and trainers would do a training session with the serval that lasted 10-15 minutes. In the BTS encounters that lasted 30-40 minutes, a maximum of 6 people were allowed, and visitors could get up close to the serval to take pictures, gently stroke the cat, and feed it a small quantity of cream cheese. If one cat was being used for presentations, the other was in a BTS encounter. They also had it set up where if one female was doing both treatments, the other received the no interactions treatment. An ethogram (a table used to organize an inventory of behaviors or actions exhibited by an animal) was used to record the behaviors of the servals. Four behavioral categories were noted: passive, active, maintenance, and abnormal repetitive behaviors. Examples of passive behaviors included sitting, sleeping, and standing. Active behaviors included walking, running, and investigating. Observed maintenance behaviors were grooming, defecating, eating, scratching, etc. And the abnormal repetitive behavior was pacing.
Results showed that when cats were excluded from visitor interaction, pacing significantly increased. Researchers believe that pacing could be an indicator of boredom or anticipation towards a potential encounter. If this were to be the case, it would provide supportive evidence that the servals were motivated to participate in the interactive program and that cognitive and physical stimulation for these solitary cats has a positive impact on their welfare. The results, however, were not at all conclusive in some areas. More research needs to be done on determining if visitors were the main variable impacting serval behavior. Palatable food rewards, cognitive stimulation, interactions with caretakers, or temporary changes in environment could have been other factors that caused a decrease in pacing behavior. Generalizations from this study must also be limited since the study relied on only two test subjects. A good experiment will use several test subjects to make sure the results are representative of the entire population.
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References
Lydia K. Acaralp-Rehnberg, Grahame J. Coleman, Michael J. L. Magrath, Vicky Melfi, Kerry V. Fanson, and Ian M. Bland. The Effect of Behind-The-Scenes Encounters and Interactive Presentations on the Welfare of Captive Servals (Leptailurus Serval). Apr. 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/4/743/htm.
