Welfare Implications of Zoo Animal Training

Training provides zoo professionals with a tool by which they can effectively manipulate the behaviour of animals in their care. This chapter clarifies how animal welfare science can be used to better understand the impact of training; enable zoo professionals to take an evidence‐based approach to whether training is the best tool for a given a situation. It explores methods of evaluating the impact of training on welfare and initiates discussion and motivates investigation of the relationship between animal welfare and the provision of husbandry training in zoos. Embedded within zoo animal welfare science is the precept that providing control to animals is essential for them to experience a good welfare state and that control in the environment can be achieved by offering choice in that environment. Much of the literature focusing on zoo animal training evidences success of a training programme, by the expression of the desired behaviour.