how do zoos help with animal research

Research in the modern Zoo

Zoos have come a long way from their beginnings as menageries in the 19th century. Rather than showcasing exotic animals purely for profit and entertainment as early zoos did, modern accredited zoos are active participants in scientific research and wildlife conservation. Research and conservation go hand-in-hand: in order to protect wild animals and their habitats, we need to understand these animals and the threats they face. Our mission at Zoo Atlanta – to save wildlife and their habitats through conservation, research, education, and engaging experiences – drives our contributions to these efforts. Read on to find out how to connect your students to current research and inspire conservation action within your classrooms.  

There are two broad types of wildlife research: in-situ research and ex-situ research. In-situ research is conducted out in the wild. This type of research can directly study the threats facing wild animal populations. It allows scientists to monitor and evaluate animal behavior, population dynamics, and ecosystem processes. The benefit of this type of research is that you are studying wild animals in their wild habitats. 

Ex-situ research is that which takes place outside of an animal’s natural habitat, such as here at the Zoo. This type of research can focus on topics like veterinary medicine, animal training, and individual animal personalities and behavior. Ex-situ research allows researchers to study animals up close and evaluate individual animal behaviors, development, and physiology. Ex-situ research can help conservation efforts that help protect wild animals and their habitats by providing information that would be difficult to obtain in the wild. It also helps zoos learn how to take better care of their animals. 

Zoo Atlanta participates in both in-situ and ex-situ research projects. In-situ research efforts are conducted through field work by zoo teammates and by providing support for the research projects of trusted partners. One effort we have participated in is the discovery and  naming of new species of amphibians . Dr. Joe Mendelson, the Director of Research at Zoo Atlanta, is heavily involved in these efforts and argues that taxonomy is “central to our understanding of the planet and central to our efforts to conserve our increasingly threatened biodiversity.” The Zoo partners with the Central Florida Zoo’s Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation and Auburn University to track and monitor re-released  eastern indigo snakes , many of whom were reared at Zoo Atlanta, in the Conecuh National Forest. We also work closely with the  Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International , an organization devoted to researching and protecting gorillas in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of our flagship projects focuses on studying a deadly fungus that has caused  Panamanian golden frogs  to become extinct in the wild. We care for a small population of these frogs at the Zoo with the hope that they can one day be re-released into the wild.  

Zoo Atlanta also conducts many ex-situ research projects on Zoo grounds. As one of the only zoos in the United States to house giant pandas, we have been able to  study giant panda  maternal behavior and sensory perception. These studies can help zoos take better care of panda cubs and provide better enrichment for pandas, while also providing insights that may aid wild panda conservation. The Zoo is the headquarters for the  Great Ape Heart Project , which aims to understand heart disease in great apes such as gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and chimpanzees. The project studies the causes, diagnosis, and treatment for heart disease in great apes. We also collaborate with researchers from Georgia Tech to study how  elephants can use their trunks  to delicately pick up objects and suck in large amounts of water.  Veterinary medicine ,  Komodo  dragon genome  sequencing, and  sidewinder snake  movement and biodesign are just a few of the other ex-situ research projects that Zoo Atlanta participates in. 

Both in-situ and ex-situ research efforts are vital to wildlife conservation. Zoos are particularly well-situated to conduct ex-situ research, which makes them valuable partners to conservation organizations seeking to learn more about how to protect wild animals. They also support in-situ research projects by contributing money, providing staff and expertise to assist with these efforts, and educating the public about the value of research. You and your students can learn more about Zoo Atlanta’s research efforts by visiting the  Research  section on our website or reading  Beyond the Zoo , which outlines more ways that Zoo Atlanta contributes to wildlife research and conservation efforts. Advanced students who are interested in pursuing biological research can peruse our list of  Zoo Atlanta scientific publications . If you want to visit the Zoo, meet some of the animals we care for and study, and talk to knowledgeable Zoo Atlanta staff members, check out our  Teacher Resources  to start planning your trip

Connect With Your Wild Side #onlyzooatl

April 15, 2009

How Do Zoos Help Endangered Animals?

There are more to zoos than putting animals on display

Dear EarthTalk: Do zoos have serious programs to save endangered species, besides putting a few captives on display for everyone to see? -- Kelly Traw, Seattle, WA

Most zoos are not only great places to get up close to wildlife, but many are also doing their part to bolster dwindling populations of animals still living free in the wild. To wit, dozens of zoos across North America participate in the Association of Zoos and Aquarium’s (AZA’s) Species Survival Plan (SSP) Program, which aims to manage the breeding of specific endangered species in order to help maintain healthy and self-sustaining populations that are both genetically diverse and demographically stable.

The end goal of many SSPs is the reintroduction of captive-raised endangered species into their native wild habitats. According to the AZA, SSPs and related programs have helped bring black-footed ferrets, California condors, red wolves and several other endangered species back from the brink of extinction over the last three decades. Zoos also use SSPs as research tools to better understand wildlife biology and population dynamics, and to raise awareness and funds to support field projects and habitat protection for specific species. AZA now administers some 113 different SSPs covering 181 individual species.

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To be selected as the focus of an SSP, a species must be endangered or threatened in the wild. Also, many SSP species are “flagship species,” meaning that they are well-known to people and engender strong feelings for their preservation and the protection of their habitat. The AZA approves new SSP programs if various internal advisory committees deem the species in question to be needy of the help and if sufficient numbers of researchers at various zoos or aquariums can dedicate time and resources to the cause.

AZA’s Maryland-based Conservation and Science Department administers the worldwide SSP program, generating master plans for specific species and coordinating research, transfer and reintroductions. Part of this process involves designing a “family tree” of particular managed populations in order to achieve maximum genetic diversity and demographic stability. AZA also makes breeding and other management recommendations with consideration given to the logistics and feasibility of transfers between institutions as well as maintenance of natural social groupings. In some cases, master plans may recommend not to breed specific animals, so as to avoid having captive populations outgrow available holding spaces.

While success stories abound, most wildlife biologists consider SSP programs to be works in progress. AZA zoos have been instrumental, for instance, in establishing a stable population of bongos, a threatened forest antelope native to Africa, through captive breeding programs under the SSP program. Many of these captive-bred bongos have subsequently been released into the wild and have helped bolster dwindling population numbers accordingly.

Of course, for every success story there are dozens of other examples where results have been less satisfying . SSP programs for lowland gorillas, Andean condors, giant pandas and snow leopards, among others, have not had such clear success, but remain part of the larger conservation picture for the species in question and the regions they inhabit.

CONTACTS : AZA’s Conservation & Science Program, www.aza.org/Conscience .

EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk , P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; [email protected] . Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php . EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook .

The Case for Zoos: A Scientist’s Perspective

Andrew Cunningham

Deputy Director of Science

Andrew Cunningham, Deputy Director of Science, considers why zoos are important... and whether we actually need them at all any more. 

How can zoos justify their ongoing existence in this modern age, when information and images of any species under the sun is just a click of the mouse away?

Certainly this is a question that even I still ask myself occasionally, two years away from my 30 year anniversary as a veterinarian and conservation scientist within the Zoological Society of London’s academic faculty, the Institute of Zoology.

Working for a research institution linked to one of the world’s most famous zoos means we’re able to see first-hand the impact zoos have on conservation, with global research projects benefitting from the input and support from zoos.  

Do all zoos deserve to keep operating?

Certainly standards of animal welfare, enrichment and conservation work in the zoos of many developed countries have come on leaps and bounds in recent decades, but there are still sadly zoos in some parts of the world where radical improvements in animal welfare and management are required.

All zoos should not be tarred with the one brush, however. 

The positive effects of zoos

Let’s also consider the many positive impacts that well-managed, scientific zoos can have.

For example, there are few more effective ways to demonstrate the amazing diversity of life on Earth to those who don’t have the privilege of seeing the huge range of wild animals in their natural habitats around the world.

Enabling visitors to see animals up close has a lasting effect on how they view the natural world.

The concepts of zoos as ‘arks’ can be overblown at times but, speaking as someone with a background in wildlife veterinary science, I can personally vouch for how important insights gained in zoos can be for the conservation of wildlife in the field, both in terms of understanding animal behaviour and for exploring best-practice in managing threatened species in their natural habitats. 

The project I was involved in to save vultures from extinction in Asia was just one field conservation project that very clearly benefited from insights gained in zoos – the design and management of breeding centres was informed by the zoological world, and knowledge gained from investigating and treating disease in zoo animals proved invaluable in the wild.

Other examples include the ongoing battle against the chytrid fungus that’s currently devastating amphibian populations worldwide.

Again, zoos like ZSL and our partners around the world have a definite role to play in terms of maintaining breeding populations in captivity for species facing imminent extinction in the wild and in bringing this important story to the public through our exhibits.

Public knowledge and pressure inform human behaviours and government policies which, in turn, impact the conservation of animals in the wild.  

Modern zoos maintain high animal welfare standards while also running conservation projects in the field. They do, however, need to keep pushing themselves to demonstrate and communicate the impacts their work is having on the ground, including the incorporation of public outreach both locally and at conservation field sites.

There is a need for greater collaboration between those at the coal face of zoological science and those managing animal collections, to ensure this connection between zoos, field conservation and public education is as tangible, genuine and widely-understood as possible.

But given the dramatic and accelerating collapse in biodiversity currently being witnessed all around the world, the case for responsibly-managed zoos remains strong.

We know we can, and we will, find the solutions to create a better future, because the possibilities to revive nature are endless if we stand together.

• A-Z Publications

Annual Review of Animal Biosciences

Volume 11, 2023, review article, open access, the role of zoos and aquariums in a changing world.

• Rafael Miranda 1 , Nora Escribano 1 , María Casas 1 , Andrea Pino-del-Carpio 1 , and Ana Villarroya 1
• View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: Instituto de Biodiversidad y Medioambiente (BIOMA), Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Navarra, Spain; email: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
• Vol. 11:287-306 (Volume publication date February 2023) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-animal-050622-104306
• First published as a Review in Advance on October 20, 2022
• Copyright © 2023 by the author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information

Zoos and aquariums have evolved significantly. From their origins as enclosures for the mere entertainment of the public, these institutions have undertaken new functions responding to the biodiversity crisis and social demands. Modern zoos and aquariums have the opportunity to educate people, contribute to species conservation, and produce animal-related research. However, there is increasing criticism toward the outcomes of their actions and the holding of species in their facilities. This review offers an integrated analysis of the state of knowledge about the role that zoos and aquariums play today. It describes their performance regarding their conservation, education, and research functions, highlighting general patterns and offering future perspectives. It identifies some challenges common to all these institutions, concluding that the way they keep up with the ever-growing social and environmental expectations will be decisive hereafter.

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• Published: 28 June 2018

Evaluating the Contribution of North American Zoos and Aquariums to Endangered Species Recovery

• Judy P. Che-Castaldo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9118-9202 1 ,
• Shelly A. Grow 2 &
• Lisa J. Faust 1  

Scientific Reports volume  8 , Article number:  9789 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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• Biodiversity
• Conservation biology

The challenge of recovering threatened species necessitates collaboration among diverse conservation partners. Zoos and aquariums have long partnered with other conservation organizations and government agencies to help recover species through a range of in situ and ex situ conservation projects. These efforts tend to be conducted by individual facilities and for individual species, and thus the scope and magnitude of these actions at the national level are not well understood. Here we evaluate the means and extent to which North American zoos and aquariums contribute to the recovery of species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), by synthesizing data from federal recovery plans for listed species and from annual surveys conducted by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. We found that in addition to managing ex situ assurance populations, zoos frequently conduct conservation research and field-based population monitoring and assessments. Cooperatively managed populations in zoos tend to focus on species that are not listed on the ESA or on foreign listings, and thus it may be beneficial for zoos to manage more native threatened species. Our results highlight the existing contributions, but also identify additional opportunities for the zoo community to help recover threatened species.

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Introduction.

Due to the magnitude and complexity of the global extinction crisis, successful species conservation will require the engagement of all potential partners: state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, local communities and resource users, industry stakeholders, and wildlife managers 1 . These diverse partners each bring unique perspectives, expertise, and resources, not all of which will be appropriate or necessary in every case. However, a clear understanding of the potential contributions of each partner will help to identify the most relevant entities to call upon in each case.

Zoos and aquariums (hereafter, “zoos”) are becoming more broadly recognized as important partners for conserving threatened species 2 , 3 . There is a long history of zoos engaging in species recovery, from the American bison and California condor to the black-footed ferret and Panamanian golden frog 4 . However, the role of zoos in species conservation has often focused on ex situ species management, in particular ex situ breeding 5 , 6 . For example, the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Actions Classification 7 identifies 30 distinct types of conservation actions, but specifies a role for zoos in only two of those ( ex situ conservation, outreach and communications). The conservation value of ex situ breeding has also been somewhat controversial, with views ranging from it being a last resort that diverts resources from in situ efforts 8 , to part of a continuum of management actions for threatened species 9 . Even when ex situ breeding is acknowledged as part of the conservation strategy, the ability of zoos to sustain demographically and genetically viable populations for the long-term has been questioned 10 , 11 . Undoubtedly these issues and concerns must continue to be explored, but zoos also contribute to other conservation efforts beyond ex situ breeding 12 , 13 , 14 .

Several publications have explored generally how zoos contribute to species conservation, discussing both in situ and ex situ actions. Ex situ actions can directly target the species ( e . g ., ex situ population management, rehabilitation, gene banking) 7 , or indirectly support conservation through public outreach, biological and veterinary research, and fundraising for other organizations and projects 3 , 14 , 15 . In situ actions can include engaging and educating communities in the species’ native range, protecting and restoring habitat, supplying animals and/or staff for reintroductions, and field-based monitoring 3 , 15 . Although there are many case studies of these individual actions, the extent to which zoos contribute to conservation through these actions is not well understood. One study has evaluated the impacts of a subset of in situ conservation projects branded by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums 16 , and another summarized the number of breeding and reintroduction projects for threatened species conducted by four Canadian zoos 12 . Thus far, no study has quantified both the in situ and ex situ conservation actions conducted by zoos at a national scale.

In the U.S., all institutions accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) include species conservation as a key part of their missions, in accordance with accreditation standards. To fulfill this part of their missions, zoos carry out an array of in situ and ex situ initiatives 4 , and collaborate with other conservation organizations and government agencies. This includes the agencies [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries] that implement the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), which was enacted in 1973 to protect threatened species through both extinction prevention and recovery actions 17 . However, the extent and scope of these zoo conservation efforts have not been systematically evaluated beyond annual reports within the zoo community.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the contribution of zoos to the recovery of threatened species in the U.S. by quantifying and summarizing their conservation activities. Our analysis consisted of three parts: (1) Summarize the management actions for which zoos are the responsible parties, based on data from federal recovery plans for listed species; (2) Summarize the recent conservation activities reported by AZA-accredited facilities in responses to the association’s annual field conservation and research surveys; and (3) Quantify the number of listed species that currently have managed populations in AZA facilities in order to identify additional opportunities for species conservation. Using multiple datasets allowed us to compare the contributions as self-reported by AZA facilities against those as recognized by the agencies responsible for implementing the ESA. Due to the scope of our study, we did not aim to quantify the impacts of these conservation activities, although it would be a valuable assessment that could be implemented following the methods of Mace et al . 18 .

In this study we focused on the terrestrial (including invertebrate and amphibian) and avian species listed under the ESA as of February 2017. Therefore, the large number of zoo conservation projects on marine and aquatic species, and the small number on plant species, were outside the scope of this assessment. Zoo conservation projects involving species with other risk statuses ( e . g ., Candidate, Under Review, or Proposed status under the ESA; state-listed; those ranked as Threatened (VU, EN, CR) or Extinct in the Wild (EW) under the IUCN Red List but not listed under the ESA) were also not represented in this assessment. Additionally, we focused on listed species whose native range included the U.S. ( i . e ., U.S. or U.S./foreign listings under the ESA; “U.S. listings” hereafter) in the first two parts of our analysis, but explored the overlap between both U.S. and foreign listings with managed zoo programs in the last section.

Roles of Zoos and Aquariums in Recovery Plans

The ESA requires every listed species to have a recovery plan, which documents the management actions and the criteria that determine when the species can be delisted. We gathered recovery plan data from the USFWS Recovery Plan Ad Hoc Report database ( http://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/ore-input/ad-hoc-recovery-actions-public-report-input ), by querying all recovery actions that list a zoo, aquarium, or AZA (“zoos”) as the responsible party. As of September 2016, the recovery plans for 73 listed species (15.1% of the 482 listings that have recovery plans) named zoos as responsible for at least one recovery action. Of these, we focused on the 54 terrestrial and avian animals (6 amphibians, 31 birds, 7 invertebrates, and 10 mammals) for this analysis. Forty-two of these species are currently listed as Endangered and eight as Threatened, one is not listed due to extinction but was a species of concern at the time of recovery planning ( Moho bishopi ), and three have been delisted since the plan was written due to recovery ( Urocyon littoralis subspecies littoralis , santacruzae , and santarosae ).

In total, there were 38 recovery plans (some plans included more than one species) that described 468 recovery actions for which zoos were the responsible party. These actions involved 39 individual zoos or aquariums, or else listed AZA as the responsible party (see Table  S1 for complete list of institutions). We determined 11 keywords to represent the major types of conservation activities attributed to zoos (Table  1 ), which were derived through an iterative process. We started with 52 keywords used by AZA to categorize zoo conservation and science projects (see next section), and condensed them into 9 categories ( e . g ., anti-poaching/patrolling, disaster/emergency response, human-wildlife conflict, and wildlife trade were grouped into “threat mitigation”). We assigned these broader keywords to each recovery action based on the action descriptions from the plans, and added two keywords (fundraising, management/planning) to describe recovery actions that did not fit into existing keywords. In some cases multiple keywords were assigned to an action, resulting in a total of 605 keywords assigned.

The majority of recovery actions related to managing and/or maintaining an assurance population (36.1% of keywords), research (27.4%), and population augmentation (23.5%; Fig.  1A ). Research included a broad range of topics relevant to species recovery, from investigating the impacts of contaminants, to modeling disease dynamics, to evaluating methods for habitat restoration. Besides population augmentation, other in situ recovery actions primarily consisted of population monitoring and assessments (12.4%), but there were also a small number of projects related to mitigating threats (1.7%) and to protecting and restoring habitat (0.9%). An unexpected type of zoo recovery action was management and planning (8.3%), which included projects that either involved or supported decision-making by the recovery team, such as coordinating program components, prioritizing tasks, or evaluating existing strategies. These tasks help to improve efficiency and flexibility and therefore can contribute greatly to the success of a conservation program. Other previously recognized contributions from zoos such as education and outreach 7 , 19 and husbandry knowledge and veterinary care 13 were also represented in recovery plans (7.5% and 7.1%, respectively). Finally, zoos contributed to conservation by providing project funds (4.5%), which were raised not only through visitor fees 8 but also by securing state, federal, and private grants. The keyword related to providing rescue, rehabilitation, or sanctuary facilities did not apply to any zoo-based recovery actions described in these plans. However, they may be more likely to be included in plans for ESA-listed marine species ( e . g ., sea turtles).

Conservation activities carried out by North American zoos and aquariums for species listed under the Endangered Species Act, sorted by type using 11 keywords. The number of instances of each keyword is shown at the base of the bars. ( A ) Distribution of the 468 recovery actions for which zoos and aquariums are the responsible party as described in recovery plans; a total of 606 keywords were assigned. ( B ) Distribution of the 644 field conservation and research project submissions by zoos to the 2013–2015 Annual Report on Conservation and Science (ARCS) survey; a total of 786 keywords were assigned.

Recovery actions were distributed unevenly across taxa (Fig.  2A ), with the majority of actions pertaining to birds (357 out of 468 actions). This was because the Revised Hawaiian Forest Birds Recovery Plan 20 included a very similar set of up to 19 recovery actions for each of 19 different bird species (for a total of 289 recovery actions) that involved either the San Diego Zoological Society or the Honolulu Zoo. To compare recovery action types among taxonomic groups, we further clustered the 11 project keywords into three broader categories: ex situ , in situ , and knowledge/capacity. Ex situ included the projects related to animal care and management at zoos (i.e., assurance population, husbandry/veterinary care, rescue/rehabilitation/sanctuary), whereas in situ included projects that took place at the species’ native range (i.e., population augmentation, monitoring/assessments, threat mitigation, and habitat creation/restoration/protection). The remaining project types all focused on increasing biological knowledge or the capacity for conservation (i.e. research, education/outreach, management/planning, fundraising). For birds, all three categories of projects were similarly common, with a slightly lower proportion of in situ projects (Fig.  2A ). In contrast, in situ projects were the most common category for invertebrates. Knowledge and capacity-building projects (primarily research) were the most common type of zoo recovery action for mammals and amphibians, accounting for 56% and 40% of their action keywords, respectively.

Conservation activities carried out by North American zoos and aquariums for species listed under the Endangered Species Act, by taxonomic group. Activities were aggregated into three categories based on the activity type keywords: conservation knowledge or capacity (research, education/outreach, management/planning, fundraising), ex situ (assurance population, husbandry/veterinary care, rescue/rehab/sanctuary), and in situ (population augmentation, monitoring/assessments, threat mitigation, and habitat creation/restoration/protection). The total instances of keywords for each taxonomic group are shown in parentheses. ( A ) Distribution of the 468 recovery actions for which zoos and aquariums are the responsible party from recovery plans; a total of 606 keywords were assigned. ( B ) Distribution of the 644 field conservation and research project submissions by zoos to the 2013–2015 Annual Report on Conservation and Science (ARCS) survey; a total of 786 keywords were assigned.

In addition to working with federal agencies in recovery programs, zoos also collaborate with other partners, including academic institutions, research institutions, or universities (collectively “academic institutions”) and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Thus we also examined the involvement of these two types of partners in the recovery actions that specified zoos as a responsible party. All four recovery actions related to habitat creation/restoration/protection listed either academic institutions (2 actions) or other NGOs (2 actions) as additional responsible parties, suggesting such field projects may require larger collaborations to implement. Academic institutions were involved in nearly half of the actions with research as a keyword (54 out of 128 actions), but did not collaborate with zoos as much on other types of recovery actions (<13% for all other types). Other NGOs partnered with zoos most frequently on actions related to assurance populations (26 out of 169 actions) and research (26 out of 128 actions), but proportionally they collaborated primarily on actions related to education and outreach (14 out of 35 actions) and threat mitigation (2 out of 8 actions).

Although recovery plans provide an official documentation of the extent to which zoos participate in recovery programs when the plans were created, they do not provide the full picture. Nearly one-third of all U.S. listed animals do not have a recovery plan (482 out of 710 listed animal species had plans as of September 2016), and finalized plans are rarely updated and therefore tend to exclude more recent or current projects. Additionally, a zoo’s involvement may not have been explicitly described as a recovery action, or only the primary holding facilities may have been identified when multiple institutions are involved.

Conservation Activities Reported by Zoos and Aquariums

We next summarized zoo conservation activities based on the AZA’s field conservation and research surveys from 2013–2015. These surveys are used to produce the association’s Annual Report on Conservation and Science (ARCS; http://www.aza.org/annual-report-on-conservation-and-science ). In the field conservation survey, AZA member institutions report only their conservation efforts that have direct impacts on animals and habitats in the wild. In the research survey, they report on any hypothesis-driven research conducted at these institutions or by their staff and the resulting publications. Response rates differed between surveys and years, with 86–92% of institutions responding for the field conservation survey and 52–64% responding for the research survey between 2013–2015. Although this dataset likely underrepresents the conservation and research projects in zoos for listed species, it still provides the most comprehensive current summary of these activities across AZA. Because of the specific focus of these surveys, the responses would also exclude education programs that do not directly target the local communities in the species’ native range. Therefore our analysis leaves out many of the conservation-oriented education projects carried out by zoos, which can also have significant impacts on achieving biodiversity conservation 21 .

We queried the database of field conservation and research survey responses for references to ESA-listed species in the project titles, descriptions, or the selected focal species. We tallied the number of conservation project submissions, representing unique combinations of institutions, projects, and species. That is, the same project may involve multiple institutions, and we count these as unique projects for each institution. This is because each institution may submit the project under a different name or description, thereby making it difficult to consistently delineate unique projects. Between 2013–2015, 142 AZA institutions reported a total of 644 active conservation projects involving 74 ESA-listed, U.S. terrestrial and avian species (23 mammals, 21 birds, 12 amphibians, 11 reptiles, and 7 invertebrates). Of these, 50 are currently listed as Endangered and 24 as Threatened. Although 54 of the 74 listings have finalized recovery plans, only 18 of those plans mentioned zoos as responsible parties for recovery actions.

Similar to the actions from recovery plans, we assigned each zoo project from the survey data to one or more of the 11 keywords representing different types of conservation activities (Table  1 ). Of the 786 keywords assigned, most were related to research (25.2%), monitoring/assessments (17.6%), population augmentation (16.0%), and managing assurance populations (12.7%; Fig.  1B ). Fundraising directed to recovery programs or conservation organizations (for purposes unspecified in the survey response) accounted for 11.3% of the keywords. Projects related to education and outreach (targeting local communities in the species’ native range) accounted for 5.2% of the keywords, and all other keywords were used fewer than 3% of the time. Compared to the conservation actions described in recovery plans, zoos reported a smaller proportion of activities related to assurance populations, but a larger proportion related to monitoring and assessments, and to habitat creation/restoration/protection. This suggests that zoos are contributing more to in situ conservation projects than is recognized in recovery plans. Zoos also reported more fundraising projects than represented in recovery plans, and additionally reported several projects related to providing rescue, rehabilitation, or sanctuary facilities. Both data sources agreed that research made up a large proportion of the conservation activities in zoos, and that there was great variation in the types of research conducted. Research projects reported by zoos ranged from understanding the genetic structure of Hawaiian petrel ( Pterodroma sandwichensis ) populations, to measuring stress levels of Guam kingfishers ( Todiramphus cinnamominus ) in human care, to developing gene banking methods for black-footed ferrets ( Mustela nigripes ).

Comparing among taxonomic groups, the majority of zoo conservation projects involved listed mammal species (318 of 644 projects), and only 25 projects involved invertebrates. Although the distribution of projects among taxa is similar to a previous assessment of in situ conservation efforts by zoos around the world 16 , none of the mammalian species in our dataset were primates due to our focus on U.S. species. Based on the keyword categories we assigned to each project, we found in situ projects were most common for listed amphibians and invertebrates (Fig.  2B ), and they primarily consisted of population augmentation projects. Knowledge and capacity projects were least common for amphibians and invertebrates, but they made up the largest proportion of projects for mammals, birds, and reptiles (consisting primarily of research projects). Ex situ projects made up less than 20% of all conservation projects reported by zoos for listed mammals, birds, and reptiles. Compared to the actions from recovery plans, a larger proportion of in situ projects were reported by zoos for all taxonomic groups, and a smaller proportion of ex situ projects were reported for all taxa except amphibians (Fig.  2 ).

We estimated the amount that AZA zoos spend on listed species by summing the project expenditures reported in the ARCS surveys. From 2013–2015, total spending on the reported field conservation and research projects specifically targeting the 74 ESA-listed species summed to $28.9 million, or on average $9.6 million per year. For context, the reported average spending per year on the same set of species in 2013–2015 was $146.4 million by all federal agencies, and $7.9 million by all state agencies 22 , 23 , 24 . Among the different types of conservation activities, the majority of funds were spent on assurance populations, followed by population monitoring and assessment and research (Fig.  3A ). Comparing across taxa, expenditures were greatest on conservation projects for bird and mammal species (Fig.  3B ).

Spending by North American zoos and aquariums on conservation projects for species listed under the Endangered Species Act, as reported in the 2013–2015 Annual Report on Conservation and Science (ARCS) survey. The proportional spending (out of the total $28.9 M spent across 3 years) is shown by ( A ) project keyword and ( B ) taxonomic group.

Listed Species with Managed Populations in Zoos and Aquariums

The recovery plans and AZA surveys provide an overview of the extent to which zoos currently contribute to recovering listed species. However, additional opportunities for conservation may exist, as a number of ESA-listed species have ex situ populations in zoos that are cooperatively managed. Since the 1980s, zoos have collaborated in managing the animals in their care through goal setting, cooperative breeding, and exchanging animals across institutions, with the aim of improving the health (e.g., demographic viability, genetic diversity) of those zoo animal populations 25 , 26 . In North America, cooperatively managed populations are those with a Species Survival Plan ® (SSP) program, which is implemented by AZA member institutions. SSPs may also coordinate the conservation, research, and educational initiatives among institutions to support in situ species recovery. These programs therefore represent opportunities for zoos to contribute further to conservation efforts, because they have an established management structure and working partnerships across institutions. Cooperative management also generates a great deal of species-specific knowledge on breeding, veterinary care, behavior, and demography, which can inform or facilitate conservation actions. For example, knowledge on how to breed animals successfully and to care for and rear offspring may be important for helping to improve reproduction of a threatened species. Further, the establishment of an SSP program demonstrates a long-term commitment to the species by multiple AZA institutions, which may be leveraged to promote engagement in and support for wild populations of the same species.

Overall, 143 of the 482 SSP programs (29.7%) were for ESA-listed species, representing 154 listings (which included separate listings for Distinct Population Segments or subspecies of the same species). The majority of these were for species listed as Endangered (83.4%) and as foreign (77.9%). Of the 387 listings for U.S. terrestrial and avian species, 36 (9.3%) currently have zoo populations managed by an SSP program. Interestingly, only 14 of the 54 species whose recovery plans specified roles for zoos had SSP populations, and 24 of the 74 species identified in the AZA surveys had SSP populations. Only 10 species overlapped across the three datasets, meaning they have recovery plans that specified a role for zoos, conservation projects reported by zoos in AZA surveys, and zoo populations managed by an SSP program. This finding suggests that an SSP program is not required for zoos to participate in recovery programs, and many zoos work with listed species outside of the SSP framework. On the other hand, there are additional SSP programs that could participate in that species’ recovery but currently do not.

Most of the SSP programs for listed species involved mammals, with existing programs for 21 of the 74 (28.4%) U.S. mammal listings (Fig.  4A ). All other listed taxa were much less represented, especially invertebrates, for which the American burying beetle was the only listing (out of 148) with an SSP program. The picture was similar when including both U.S. and foreign listings, with 84 additional SSP programs for foreign-listed mammals, and a smaller number of additional SSP programs for foreign-listed birds and reptiles (14 and 13, respectively; Fig.  4B ). In summary, the majority of SSP programs did not manage listed species, but those that did tended to focus on species that were more at risk (listed as Endangered rather than Threatened). There was also a taxonomic bias for SSP programs to focus on mammals and a geographic bias for non-U.S. species, many of which were native to African and Central American countries. Our results parallel findings from a previous study that zoo and aquarium collections favor larger vertebrate species 5 . However, the bias of SSP programs toward non-U.S. species contrasts with an earlier finding that zoos tended to focus on mammal and bird species that are native to economically developed countries 27 .

The proportion of terrestrial and avian animal species listed under the Endangered Species Act that have cooperatively managed populations in AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums, by taxonomic group and listing status (T = Threatened, E = Endangered). ( A ) The proportion of U.S. listings with managed programs for the listed species. ( B ) The proportion of U.S. and foreign listings with managed programs for the listed species. ( C ) The proportion of U.S. listings with managed programs for a congener of the listed species. ( D ) The proportion of U.S. and foreign listings with managed programs for a congener of the listed species.

Zoos have the potential to contribute even further to species recovery, as shown by the number of listed species that have a congener with a managed SSP population in zoos (Fig.  4C,D ). Management of a closely related species in the same genus produces valuable husbandry and biological information that may be useful for informing the conservation of the listed species. Institutions holding the congeners may also develop education programs or design exhibits to promote conservation actions for the closely related listed species. Additionally, since zoos already have the resources and facilities to house a closely related species, it may be possible for those institutions to house the more threatened species instead, if ex situ breeding or rehabilitation is deemed beneficial (of course, species-specific behaviors and requirements will determine the extent to which that would be feasible, while threats and recovery strategies will determine the appropriateness of an ex situ breeding program). Across all taxa, there were SSP programs for the congeners of 70 out of 387 (18.1%) U.S. listings, and 299 out of 969 (30.9%) U.S. and foreign listings of terrestrial and avian species. In particular, there were managed programs for the congeners of 36.5% and 41.4% of U.S. listings for mammals and reptiles, respectively (Fig.  4C ), and 51.5% and 53.2% of total (U.S. and foreign) listings for mammals and reptiles, respectively (Fig.  4D ). This represents a significant body of knowledge and resources that could greatly enhance species recovery efforts, but have yet to be broadly utilized.

Our evaluation showed that zoos contribute to a diverse array of in situ and ex situ conservation efforts, and serve as important partners in the recovery of threatened species in the U.S. Zoo conservation activities (Table  1 ) spanned many of the conservation actions previously described 7 . Beyond maintaining ex situ populations 5 and increasing public understanding of biodiversity 21 , zoos carry out many more in situ projects than typically recognized (though see Olive and Jansen 12 ), including a large number of monitoring projects. We also found that zoos conduct a range of field- and zoo-based conservation research projects, which were nearly as numerous as ex situ breeding efforts (Fig.  1 ). Biodiversity monitoring and research both help to support successful species recovery, but they are not commonly viewed as significant ways in which zoos contribute to conservation. Our findings support earlier studies that showed these critical conservation actions are increasingly being funded or conducted by NGOs 28 , 29 , including zoos.

However, additional opportunities exist. We found that similar to zoo holdings overall 27 , managed SSP populations currently focus on non-threatened species. Among listed species, however, managed programs do tend to prioritize species that are more at risk of extinction. There are many considerations that determine the selection of species for zoo exhibits, and management programs are increasingly including conservation status in their decision-making. However, if a species is especially difficult to house, cannot reproduce successfully, or has low survivorship in zoos, then establishing ex situ populations may not be feasible or worthwhile. Further, there are ways to contribute to conservation even if zoos are managing the less at-risk species that are closely related to a threatened species, as discussed above.

U.S. zoos may also increase their conservation efforts by managing more native threatened species, as our results showed a tendency for SSP programs to focus on foreign-listed species. Ex situ populations would ideally be established in the species’ native range 2 , but currently >90% of the U.S. listed avian and terrestrial species do not have an SSP population in North American zoos. Further research is needed to evaluate whether and the extent to which those listed species would benefit from ex situ population management. Zoos are also carrying out relatively few education and outreach programs that directly impact listed species in the wild (Fig.  1B ). By including more native threatened species, zoos could develop associated education and outreach programs to engage the community most likely to impact the species and promote direct conservation actions. Of course, zoo education programs that do not directly affect wild populations are still valuable 21 , and we reiterate that our review did not summarize the magnitude of those existing efforts.

Finally, our findings suggest a need for greater coordination across zoos and better engagement with other conservation science partners. For example, 40 institutions reported working on various field conservation and research projects for the polar bear in the AZA surveys, but it is unclear the extent to which these efforts were coordinated to maximize their effectiveness. Only 5 recovery plans (for 5 species) named two or more zoos as the responsible party for any recovery action, suggesting such coordination among zoos is infrequent or poorly represented in plans. Only a quarter of the recovery plan actions conducted by zoos involved either academic or NGO partners, although integrating efforts into larger collaborations could lead to better outcomes 29 . However, coordination with other conservation partners may be increasing, as more partnerships between zoos and academic institutions are being formed ( e . g ., Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation, the Phoenix Zoo - Arizona State University conservation partnership, the Living Earth Collaborative). Other zoo partnerships supporting species recovery include concentrated breeding centers and consortiums such as the Conservation Centers for Species Survival (C2S2), and AZA’s SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction, a conservation framework launched in 2015 that prioritizes collaboration 14 . There are also efforts to integrate ex situ and in situ species management through the IUCN Conservation Planning Specialist Group’s One Plan Approach 30 , 31 .

In this assessment we focused on terrestrial and avian species listed under the ESA. Thus, the role of zoos in helping to conserve marine animals, plants, and species with other risk statuses remain to be examined. Additionally, further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of the many zoo conservation projects 18 , which could inform and improve future efforts. In summary, our study highlights the wide-ranging conservation actions conducted by North American zoos, and identify opportunities for better integration with the broader conservation community. By evaluating the current role of zoos in species conservation, our study provides a better understanding of the expertise, resources, and opportunities that zoos can offer as one of the many necessary partners in recovering threatened species.

Data availability

The recovery plan data analyzed in the current study are included in the Supplementary Information (Table  S2 ). The AZA survey data, except financial information, are available on AZA’s website ( http://www.aza.org/field-conservation ; http://www.aza.org/research-and-science ). Additional data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all of the AZA-accredited zoos, aquariums, and certified facilities that submitted information about their field conservation and research to AZA’s annual surveys. We also thank AZA’s Field Conservation and Research and Technology Committees for helping to refine surveys, review data submissions, and work with AZA members on their submissions. We thank A. Ahmad and S.Y. Kim for assistance with data compilation.

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J.P.C., S.G. and L.J.F. co-developed the project. S.G. compiled and analyzed the AZA survey data, and J.P.C. compiled and analyzed the recovery plan and managed program data, and prepared the manuscript and figures. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Judy P. Che-Castaldo .

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Che-Castaldo, J.P., Grow, S.A. & Faust, L.J. Evaluating the Contribution of North American Zoos and Aquariums to Endangered Species Recovery. Sci Rep 8 , 9789 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27806-2

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Why Conservation Matters: How Zoos Help Protect Wildlife and Ecosystems

As a dedicated haven for wildlife lovers, association of zoos and aquariums (aza) accredited zoos hold a deep commitment to not only providing a safe and healthy home to incredible animals but also spearheading efforts for their conservation..

Understanding the significance of preserving biodiversity and the critical role zoos play in this mission is critical to their future. To get a picture of the relationship between zoos and conservation, together we’ll explore:

• What is conservation?
• Why is wildlife conservation important?
• How zoos engage in conservation

Conservation at Philadelphia Zoo

What is Conservation?

Wildlife conservation refers to the deliberate efforts aimed at protecting and revitalizing at-risk animals and plant species, as well as their habitats . It involves a spectrum of strategies, from scientific research and breeding programs in human care, to habitat restoration and public education initiatives on living sustainably. With human populations increasing tremendously, the need for natural resources has also increased, leading to many species being at risk, endangered, or extinct. While this can be a result of direct action—like exploitation, poaching, and wildlife trade, indirect causes such as climate change, deforestation and urbanization create massive impacts that disrupt ecosystems. Especially for these latter causes, conservation is not just one person’s responsibility, but a combination of wildlife organizations and the collective efforts of many to protect our home and its inhabitants.

At zoos around the world, conservation is a commitment that drives daily operations. All AZA accredited zoos partner with conservation organizations, conducting research internally and externally, and working as a network to implement programs that safeguard species from extinction.

“There are many species around the world that only exist today because they were saved by zoos,” says Dani Hogan, Director of Mission Integration at Philadelphia Zoo. “Thousands of people have dedicated their lives to saving wildlife, and we all work together to make that happen. The result is a healthier planet that has more biodiversity, more habitats, and more beauty for all of us to enjoy. As a zoo, it is our responsibility to bring this critical work to life for our guests.”

Why is Wildlife Conservation Important?

Preserving biodiversity.

Biodiversity is the cornerstone of a healthy ecosystem. Each species, no matter how small, plays a crucial role in maintaining the balance of nature. Losing a species can have far-reaching effects on the environment, impacting everything from pollination and soil fertility to air quality and abundance of harmful pests. Humans are not immune to these effects: think how the loss of honeybees alone can greatly impact lives. Without the power of their widespread pollination , many common fruits and vegetables would cease to exist, while other products become astronomically expensive. Even lesser-known species such as the endangered Rodrigues Fruit Bats , are important to the survival of their ecosystems and the people that rely on it. Philadelphia Zoo maintains and cares for over 50 of these bats in the Rare Animal Conservation Center.

Ethical Responsibility

Humans have an obligation to protect the planet’s biodiversity as we continue utilizing and benefiting directly from its resources. Zoos, as institutions dedicated to wildlife conservation and education, must raise awareness and inspire action to create a better world for all its inhabitants. Remember—while no one person themselves can achieve a more sustainable world, individual actions can inspire many to do the same.

How Zoos Engage in Conservation

Accredited zoos around the world are crucial hubs for conservation efforts. “The mission of any accredited zoo is so much more than simply being a place for people to see animals,” says Dani Hogan. “At Philadelphia Zoo, you can visit animals that no longer live in the wild and learn about them directly from the staff who care for them every day. Every visit contributes to our conservation programs. So, a visit to the Zoo is a way for you and your family to have an amazing day while also doing something good for wildlife.”

Here are some typical ways zoos champion various conservation initiatives:

Education and Awareness

Through interactive exhibits, passionate staff ready to chat, and additional in-school educational programs, visitors and students gain insight about the importance of species conservation through making connections with their favorite animals.

Breeding Programs

Zoos around the world actively participate in breeding programs for endangered species . By carefully managing genetic diversity and breeding pairs, the aim is to bolster populations of threatened animals in human care and share new information that can aid researchers that work with wild populations.

Research and Innovation

Collaborating with scientists, conservationists and veterinary professionals, zoos are often at the forefront of global, groundbreaking research to better understand species and develop strategies for their preservation and care. As America’s First Zoo, Philadelphia Zoo has many times published leading research and methodologies that not only increase the quality of care for animals in human care but also provided additional insight to protecting animals in the wild.

“An excellent example of how zoos can provide inspiration and knowledge to protecting animals in the wild can be seen in Philadelphia Zoo’s Zoo360 trail system,” says Vice President of Animal Well-Being Rachel Metz. “These trails served as inspiration for the organization ‘Save The Golden Lion Tamarin’ when they were investigating ways to connect critical breeding habitats that were fragmented due to oil and gas pipe lines and interstates in Brazil. The tamarins can now safely travel from one forest segment to another, increasing the genetic variability of this endangered species.”

Inspiring the Community

Zoos bring the significance of wildlife conservation into their communities. They engage visitors of all ages and backgrounds by providing unique experiences and sparking our sense of wonder about the natural world. Zoos inspire collective action by partnering with local schools and organizations to offer experiences that ensure people become environmental stewards.

Conservation is not merely a choice—it’s an imperative duty. At Philadelphia Zoo, we are proud to stand at the forefront of these efforts, advocating for the preservation of our planet’s precious wildlife heritage.

“Since our charter in 1859, Philadelphia Zoo has been committed to caring for wildlife here in Philadelphia and around the world. Conservation is built into our existence,” says Hogan.

“Philadelphia Zoo is making a difference for wildlife and wild places while at the same time inspiring local communities to think critically about their actions and move towards a more conservation minded way of life. For a zoo, there is no higher calling,” says Metz.

Not only is the Zoo constantly engaged in all of the conservation efforts mentioned above, Philadelphia Zoo ( an AZA accredited institution ) funds staff field research, hosts community programs based around education, and directly supports the conservation of targeted species and habitats as well as conservation organizations. You can learn more about some of these below:

• New Nature Foundation
• Golden Lion Tamarins (GLTs)
• Rodrigues Fruit Bats
• Amaru Bioparque Zoo

Join us in our mission as we continue to protect, educate, and inspire change by following us on social media or subscribing to our newsletter.

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Zoos Are Not Prisons. They Improve the Lives of Animals.

T he recent death of Harambe —the Western lowland gorilla shot dead at the Cincinnati Zoo after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure—has ignited a fierce debate about the role of modern zoos. Some critics have seized the tragedy as an opportunity to advance an uncompromising anti-captivity narrative in which all zoos and aquariums are inherently unethical and cruel.

To be sure, there are bad actors. The spawning of so-called “roadside zoos”—an exploitative enterprise known for its systematic negligence and abuse of animals—are some of the most egregious cases-in-point. But blunt and sweeping indictments of zoos and aquariums fail to account for how ethical institutions enrich and ultimately protect the lives of animals, both in human care and in the wild.

Responsible zoos and aquariums exist to facilitate and promote the conservation of animals. And the need for intensive conservation campaigns is now more urgent than ever before: Our world is currently in the midst of the “Sixth Extinction,” a term coined by Elizabeth Kolbert in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. Unlike the five preceding die-offs, which were precipitated by natural events—such as those that killed off the dinosaurs, exterminating three-quarters of all species on the planet—the current mass extinction is a result of human activities encroaching on wild spaces.

Today’s zoos and aquariums are uniquely positioned to combat those evolving threats. Using robust and sophisticated breeding programs, these institutions fund and facilitate countless initiatives to propagate species and preserve genetic biodiversity, and then reintroduce critically endangered or extinct species into the wild. Consider the Arabian Oryx, a striking breed of antelope from the Arabian Peninsula. The species was hunted to extinction in the wild nearly four decades ago, when the last wild Arabian Oryx was shot and killed in 1972. The Phoenix Zoo helped lead the ensuing breeding and reintroduction programs, which ultimately birthed more than 200 calves from just nine individuals. Now between Oman and Jordan, there are about 1,000 Arabian Oryx living in the wild.

The Arabian Oryx—which has since been removed from the endangered species list—isn’t alone. Breeding programs at zoos and aquariums have since saved numerous other species from extinction, including the European bison, the red wolf, and the Oregon spotted frog.

Even when animals are never introduced into the wild, placing them under human care can still improve the lives of their wild counterparts: Modern zoos and aquariums serve as bases for observation and research, which then helps protect wild animals.

One compelling example is the study of animal infection and disease, currently the subject of numerous ongoing research projects at zoos worldwide. The Zoological Society of London, for instance, is developing innovative methods to assess the risks of animals contracting disease when they’re reintroduced into the wild. Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington is leading global research efforts on the detection and treatment of the sometimes-fatal elephant herpes virus, with the ultimate goal of developing an effective vaccine to be administered to the species in both zoo and wild populations. And the San Diego Zoo retains a staff of 20 experts dedicated to the study of treating wildlife diseases that threaten conservation.

Of course, the positive contributions of zoos and aquariums in conserving wild animals cannot—and should not—outweigh the health and well-being of the animals living under the care of these institutions. That’s why American Humane Association is launching a global initiative to elevate the welfare standards of zoos and aquariums worldwide. The Humane Conservation program will be the first third-party certification devoted solely to verifying that animals living in these institutions are healthy, positively social, active, safe, and living with proper light, sound, air, and heat levels. And these standards will be set not by zoos but instead an independent collection of world-renowned experts in the fields of animal science, behavior, and ethics—a sharp departure from most existing accreditation programs, which are vulnerable to accusations of conflicts of interest and leniency.

To some detractors, the humane certification of zoos and aquariums is an oxymoron. But vast empirical and academic research discredits this black-and-white view. Animals in zoos and aquariums today can live longer, healthier, and richer lives than their forbearers ever did in the wild. Go see for yourself.

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Article Contents

Introduction, introduction to zoological organizations and accreditation, author contributions statement, acknowledgements, conflict of interest, data availability.

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A Guide for Successful Research Collaborations between Zoos and Universities

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Andrew K Schulz, Cassie Shriver, Catie Aubuchon, Emily G Weigel, Michelle Kolar, Joseph R Mendelson III, David L Hu, A Guide for Successful Research Collaborations between Zoos and Universities, Integrative and Comparative Biology , Volume 62, Issue 5, November 2022, Pages 1174–1185, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icac096

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Zoos offer university researchers unique opportunities to study animals that would be difficult or impractical to work with in the wild. However, the different cultures, goals, and priorities of zoos and universities can be a source of conflict. How can researchers build mutually beneficial collaborations with their local zoo? In this article, we present the results of a survey of 117 personnel from 59 zoos around the United States, where we highlight best practices spanning all phases of collaboration, from planning to working alongside the zoo and maintaining contact afterward. Collaborations were hindered if university personnel did not appreciate the zoo staff’s time constraints as well as the differences between zoo animals and laboratory animals. We include a vision for how to improve zoo collaborations, along with a history of our own decade-long collaborations with Zoo Atlanta. A central theme is the long-term establishment of trust between institutions.

In this article, we present the results of a survey of collaborations between academic researchers and zoos. Zoos and universities have different goals, funding levels, and cultures, which can lead to conflict if not proactively addressed. We focus here on zoos, but our findings may be helpful for collaborations with aquariums and botanical gardens as well.

There are >350 zoos and aquaria throughout the United States and >2000 globally. Many zoos and aquaria have active research programs beyond conservation to include basic research on in-house animal care and physiology ( Mason 2000 ). Moreover, the maintenance and husbandry of animals in zoos are often impractical for universities due to cost, space, and expertise limitations. Therefore, in a university setting, collaborating with zoos can significantly broaden research possibilities. The benefits can go both ways. Universities can bring technology, outside expertise, interdisciplinary research, and the media coverage and visibility that comes with making a scientific discovery.

Most previous studies on zoo collaborations have focused on enumerating popular research topics ( Kleiman 1985 ; Minteer and Collins 2013 ; Loh et al. 2018 ; Hosey et al. 2019 ; Mendelson et al. 2019 ; Welden et al. 2020 ; Kögler et al. 2020 ; Escribano et al. 2021 ) or the research goals of the zoo ( Fernandez and Timberlake 2008 ; Maple and Perdue 2013 ; Hopper 2017 ). Despite making a case for common interests and how research at each institution could benefit, these articles stopped short of providing suggestions for facilitating collaboration. We hope to fill this gap by writing for academics who will work with zoos and zoo staff who will advise new collaborations. The authors of this article include the combined perspectives of three university personnel, two zoo administrators, and an animal care specialist.

Universities often collaborate with industry ( Pertuzé et al. 2010 ) to access cutting-edge tools or industry data. However, for fields like biology and bio-inspired design, which require access to plants and animals, collaborations with museums, zoos, and aquariums are more likely. Zoos are generally non-profit organizations and depend on trust-built relationships more than for-profit industries ( Snavely and Tracy 2002 ; Murphy and Dixon 2012 ). The challenges associated with working with non-profit collaborators have been observed between academics and science journalists ( Levy et al. 2014 ). The top factors that enable zoo employees to conduct research include the support of the zoo director, an atmosphere where staff have dedicated time to conduct research, well-defined and supported research, and adequate equipment and supplies ( Anderson et al. 2010 ).

The study of biomechanics, physics of living systems, and bio-inspired design all depend on access to specialist species that have unique adaptations of body, behavior, or ecology ( Helms and Goel 2014 ). Working with zoos will advance bio-inspired design and promote biodiversity research by helping lesser-known specialist species gain visibility. For example, much of our experience has been working with Zoo Atlanta, which has tremendous biodiversity boasting about 215 species. Figure 1 shows the phylogenetic relationships among 69 of these species, emphasizing the phylogenetic diversity available to researchers and the opportunities for comparative biological studies. Broadly stated, research collaboration with zoos allows research personnel to study animals in controlled conditions to advance various foundational questions in science.

A phylogenetic tree of the animals cared for at Zoo Atlanta. Phylogenetic tree generated on PhyloNet and all silhouettes are from PhyloPic’s open source database.

We begin this guide with a glossary defining terms we will use throughout the paper. Then, we present our methods for survey writing, distribution, and analysis. Based on the survey responses, we will report the recommendations from survey respondents for successful research collaborations with zoos. We then provide quotes that highlight attitudes from zoo staff, relate our own experiences working with Zoo Atlanta, and close with thoughts for systematically improving zoo–university collaborations.

Proposing collaborative research with zoos requires the submission of several protocols. In this section, we define the terms commonly used by zoological and accreditation organizations.

Roadside zoos are often small for-profit establishments that may offer close contact with the animals they keep ( Moore 2008 ). With the emergence of roadside zoos that often exploit captive animals and are not grounded in traditional zoo culture, there has been a rise in zoological and conservancy accreditation ( Winders 2017 ). Accreditation at its core evaluates zoos on animal welfare guidelines and housing conditions.

Many of the hundreds of zoos in the United States are accredited by various organizations such as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and the Zoological Association of America (ZAA). Of these institutions, there are a total of 238 zoos and aquariums that are accredited by the AZA ( Gusset and Dick 2011 ). AZA accreditation is often costly, making it out of reach for zoos outside urban centers. Moreover, AZA does not dictate management style or day-to-day operations at every level that would be important to the researcher–zoo personnel relationship. AZA institutions also vary in their implementation of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approval process, co-authorship requirements for zoo staff involved in collaborations, and the level of input of keepers and veterinarians when making research decisions.

Some AZA zoos manage wildlife species in free contact. Free contact is the ability to touch an animal without barriers. For example, box turtles are often housed with free contact, and few zoos enforce protected contact with box turtles. In contrast, nearly all accredited zoos have only protected contact and no free contact with tigers, lions, and cheetahs. Protected contact involves barriers between the keepers and the animals, providing safety for both the animal and the keeper as well as preventing the animals from becoming accustomed to close contact with humans. Thus, one cannot assume that the techniques and processes from one AZA institution are applicable across institutions and species.

The paramount goal of zoos is to promote biodiversity conservation ( Godinez and Fernandez 2019 ). While conservation as a field has adopted various definitions, zoos are particularly interested in research that aims to reduce threats to wildlife, reverse the effects of environmental degradation, and promote survival in natural habitats. These kinds of conservation actions and research are becoming more dependent on interdisciplinary partnerships akin to biotechnology and bio-inspired design, creating an increasingly collaborative space for zoos and academic institutions ( Chiesa and Toletti 2004 ; Hashemi Farzaneh 2020 ). Zoos provide accessible and exciting opportunities for education research and public engagement in community conservation projects ( Sloggett 2009 ; Falk 2014 ; Schulz et al. 2022 ).

Before contacting a zoo, it is helpful to be familiar with the organization of zoo staff. Zoos usually comprise distinct departments such as carnivores, primates, ambassador animals, or hoofstock. Instead of being aligned with taxonomy, departments may align with geography (e.g., Africa or The Tropics) or simply different locations in the zoo. Department members may be either biology-focused or education-focused, interfacing with the public and researchers in different capacities. Keepers are the primary personnel at the zoo who take care of the animals and are experts on individual animal personalities, behaviors, and daily patterns. Education staff are public-facing zoo personnel that present the biology and conservation challenges and programs to the public and engage in outreach at local K–12 schools. Curators are experts on the biology of different taxonomic groups, oversee the general direction and priorities of the department, and manage the personnel (e.g., the keepers) in each department. Zoo veterinarians maintain the health and well-being of species and perform surgeries, blood collections, and actions that require anatomical and physiological knowledge of the species at the zoo. Some zoos have animal-welfare specialists who assess and seek to steadily improve all aspects of the physiological and psychological well-being of the animals. Some zoos have dedicated research personnel.

To avoid misunderstandings and wasted effort, it is crucial to make early connections with the institutional animal welfare board at the researchers’ academic institutions, which in the United States is called the IACUC. In some zoos, a university IACUC is all that is necessary to conduct research. However, an additional Zoo Research Application must be completed in other zoos, such as Zoo Atlanta. The Zoo Atlanta application requests specific information about the individual animals and biomaterials, the level of contact with the animals, and, crucially, how much time and effort by zoo staff is requested, all of which are shown in the Supplementary Material . The AZA has a similar research application form used in some zoos instead of a zoo-specific form included in the Supplementary Material ( Ripple et al. 2021 ). Each academic institution may be different, and it is important to understand the timeline of research applications. For example, zoo approval may precede the university IACUC office approval or vice versa. Some universities will accept research approval from a zoo in place of their own IACUC review.

Survey creation and analysis

To evaluate how zoo personnel view collaborations with academic institutions, we created a 10-minute online survey using the Qualtrics software platform. The Institutional Review Board approved this human subjects research study at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Protocol Number: H21472). The survey was divided into three main sections: (1) acknowledgment of consent to participate in the research study, (2) background information, including job title, zoo affiliation, and experience with academic collaborations, and (3) opinions on the importance of different aspects of academic collaborations with regards to establishing and considering future partnerships. The survey concluded with an optional space for participants to provide additional thoughts.

We distributed the survey by emailing our contacts at zoos and professional lists from online zoo forums (e.g. AZA online forums). We asked our contacts to further distribute the survey to all working personnel and the zoo's weekly newsletters. Additionally, we sent the link to various online zookeeper communities, which likely contributed to the large percentage of zookeeper responses. We used Qualtrics reports to obtain distributions of answers, averages, and standard deviations, and then RStudio and Adobe Illustrator to visualize data distributions in divergent bar graph formats.

Phylogenetic tree

The list of animal species on the Zoo Atlanta website ( https://zooatlanta.org/animals/ ) was used to generate a phylogenetic tree. Taxonomic representation is important to inform the responses from keepers to show the phylogenetic diversity represented in a medium-sized zoo such as Zoo Atlanta. We used the software PhyloT version 2 (NCBI taxonomy). The tree’s 69 species (listed in Supplementary Fig. S1 ) were annotated with free silhouettes from Phylopic, indicating differences throughout the clades. Note that the species list is only a partial list of animals kept at the zoo.

A total of 168 responses indicated “yes” to the consent form; one person said no to the consent form. Of the 168 consenting responses, 44 included only demographic and zoo information and therefore were removed from further analysis. Five respondents to the survey were from aquariums and two from non-animal housing organizations such as botanical gardens and zoo technology companies; these responses were removed from all analyses as the sample size was insufficient to merit any actionable results. Further surveys targeting such organizations are needed. Thus the data presented below are indicative of the 117 zoological responses.

Respondents represented 59 different zoological organizations, with 85 |$\%$| of respondents affiliated with AZA-accredited zoos and the other 15 |$\%$| of respondents affiliated with either international zoos or zoos accredited by other national organizations (e.g., ZAA). The largest response rate of any zoological organization was Zoo Atlanta, which comprised 38 |$\%$| of respondents.

With regards to job title, 26 |$\%$| of respondents identified as keepers, 17 |$\%$| as education staff, 19 |$\%$| as curators, 6 |$\%$| as veterinarians, 4 |$\%$| as administrators, and the remaining 28 |$\%$| as “other.” The “other” category includes executive positions (president, manager, supervisor, board member), positions within conservation programs (director, researcher, program staff), and various staff involved in programming, research, or animal care. Of the total, 75 |$\%$| of respondents indicated having prior experience collaborating with academic institutions on research, while 14 |$\%$| had no experience, and 11 |$\%$| had engaged in research collaborations but were unsure if these were with academic institutions. Of those with prior experience, 41 |$\%$| had participated in 1–5 collaborations, 16 |$\%$| in 6–10 collaborations, 8 |$\%$| in 11–20 collaborations, and 9 |$\%$| in >20 collaborations.

We then asked participants about their opinions on the importance of various aspects of collaboration with academics. We asked about the three phases of collaboration: the pre-zoo phase, alongside-zoo phase, and post-zoo phase. These phases may be further divided into the 10 steps shown in Fig. 2 beginning with the pre-zoo phase, which leads into the alongside-zoo phase and the post-zoo phase.

Schematic of the zoo–university collaboration process. The inner ring displays the three phases of research collaborations with zoos. The middle rings display the steps within each phase. The outer ring displays a checklist of tasks that were most requested by zoo staff in our survey.

Pre-zoo phase

For most zoos, contact is first made by email or submission of a web-based form. Our survey results, as shown in Table 1 ( Fig. 3 , Supplementary Fig. S2 ), indicate that researchers should be aware of:

research question or hypotheses

species of interest

proposed experimental methodology

an expected timeline for research

Recommended knowledge requirements before initial contact with the zoo.

The most important topics to include in an initial email to the zoo.

The percentage of respondents is taken from a total of n = 100 respondents.

Additionally, but of less importance, the researcher should be aware of the zoo’s available species, the zoo’s research approval structure, and the zoo’s facilities and resources.

Critical to working with animals, the researcher should consider the ethical implications of their proposed research and plan to minimize invasive techniques with the animals. University IACUC proposals may need to be submitted, as well as zoo IACUC proposals. The order of these proposals depends on the institution. The primary information required in zoo proposals includes an application for research, project proposal, CVs of the principal investigator and co-investigators, guidelines on ownership of biomaterial and data, and specifics of biomaterial requests. We have included sample forms from Zoo Atlanta and the AZA research application questionnaire in the Supplementary Material ( Ripple et al. 2021 ).

Alongside-zoo phase

After contacting the zoo, discussion of the proposed research may commence. The remaining steps of this phase include meeting with zookeepers, submitting the research proposal, and planning and performing experiments at the zoo. Iterative modifications to the proposed methodology are often made after conversations with keepers about the study’s feasibility and timeline. When asked how important specific actions are for successful collaborations, most respondents identified the following themes as very important or extremely important ( Fig. 4 , Supplementary Fig. S3 ):

transparency with methods and goals

regular communication with the zoo

updating the zoo on data analysis and conclusions

citing the zoo in scientific publications

discussing method design and improvements with keepers

crediting the zoo on social media platforms and press releases

Actions recommended by zoo personnel for successful collaborations.

As with all collaborations, transparency and communication are common themes in working with the zoos. Attribution of credit is vital to zoo staff. The zoo personnel may provide several rounds of input in experimental planning. They may even perform much of the proposed experiment themselves. Expectations of how the zoo will be credited should be stated early by both parties, revisited during the collaboration, and confirmed before publication. Attribution of credit can vary from a mention in the “Acknowledgment” section to an offer of co-authorship.

While many zoos have conservation missions, we were surprised to find that conservation tie-ins were not considered more critical for research proposals. Zoo personnel were also not as concerned with researchers’ previous experience with the species of interest or the use of jargon in their proposals. Zoo personnel have backgrounds in biology or animal behavior and will generally trust the researcher to perform data analysis and draw conclusions themselves. Nevertheless, keepers can often provide demographic information on the animals, including mass, age, sex, or other behavioral observations, and updates on metrics if they change during the study.

The zoo has years of experience dealing with the public and works pro-actively to present itself in the best possible light. Protecting the zoo’s image protects its employees against negative comments, threats, and other responses from the public. Doing so involves screening any images, videos, or text descriptions of work done at the zoo. To that end, the researcher may be asked for their plans for disseminating the results of their study. Examples of such requests are in the Zoo Atlanta research application form and the AZA research form in the Supplementary Material . The researcher may need to request prior approval from the zoo before posting on social media or accepting interview requests.

In addition to the application forms, zoos may require more formalized, legally binding policies through memorandums of understanding to help foster long-term partnerships.

Post-zoo phase

Once experiments have been completed, research collaborators transition into the post-zoo phase. In this phase, researchers communicate results with zoo personnel and develop publications, presentations, and potential press coverage. Academic researchers set a precedent for what zoo personnel will expect in future collaborations. When asked how likely they would be to engage in future collaborations with academic researchers that performed certain actions, several themes stood out as largely positive ( Fig. 5 , Supplementary Fig. S4 ):

clear communication

updated the zoo when on-site work was completed

were deliberate about applying their findings to an ongoing conservation effort

implemented suggestions from keepers

presented their shared findings at AZA conferences

Considerations by zoo personnel for continuing to work with a researcher.

In addition, we found several themes that stood out as largely negative ( Fig. 5 ):

were reckless or negligent toward an animal

were rude or dismissive toward keepers

posted questionable content on social media

failed to credit the zoo

were transparent at some steps, but not others

Overall, the choices made in this phase can make or break a relationship with the zoo. For continued collaborations, the most crucial aspect of post-zoo collaborations was clear communication. Across all three phases, respondents identified communicating a practical timeline, implementing suggestions, and crediting the zoo as important. Many zoos have dedicated public relations staff who review manuscripts and presentation files before they are presented at conferences or in journal publications. Close contact with public relations staff at zoos is even more crucial if media coverage is expected or solicited. While ties to conservation were not important in the pre- and alongside-zoo phases, they became critical in publishing and disseminating results.

Zoo Atlanta responses comprised |$30\%$| of the total responses analyzed. To test if there was a potential bias toward Zoo Atlanta in our data, we separated the Zoo Atlanta survey results from the entirety of the survey. We performed a two-tailed Mann–Whitney U test with outliers included with an |$\alpha = 0.05$|⁠ . The Mann–Whitney U test showed that only three questions had been impacted by the Zoo Atlanta survey results including the zoos available species, the zoo’s leadership structure, and discussing with keepers about methods ( Supplementary Figs. S5–S7 ). Aside from those three questions, there was no significant difference between Zoo Atlanta ( n = 35) and the total responses ( n = 117).

We have now summarized the three phases of working with the zoo. Our survey also included several open-ended questions, whose most striking responses are given in the next section.

The perspective from the zoo on collaborations

The following quotes from zoo personnel summarize experiences from years of working with collaborators. We begin with quotes illustrating common misconceptions by academic researchers.

The biggest challenge I’ve personally faced with researchers is their belief that they can do whatever they want with the animals and that all methodologies will work on their given timeline. Bringing zoo staff into the discussion earlier can avoid establishing the usually unrealistic expectations that the animals will do what you want, when you want them to do it .

It is important to note that zoo animals are never to be viewed as lab animals, but as individuals with high intrinsic value and emotional connections with zoo staff. These animals should be thought of as participants in research, rather than experimental subjects .

...Understand that [the requested] level of manipulation of animals by staff will affect how likely we are to participate. Know that animals will not be put in adverse situations just to test something .

These quotes underscore the mismatch between an outsider’s expectations and research that is feasible at a zoo. Keepers generally do not make direct contact with the animals unless necessary for veterinary procedures such as blood draws. Thus, invasive experiments that are commonly performed with domesticated animals are often not feasible with zoo animals. This perspective highlights the difference between common lab animals, such as lab mice, and zoo animals.

The following quotes illustrate the conflicts that can arise in timelines and priorities between zoo staff and researchers:

Researchers also often seem surprised that our approval process can take a long time since we’re usually weighing the benefits of the research with the cost of keeper time and sometimes animal welfare. We need to make sure the project is worth it!

For us to dedicate resources (biomaterial, staff time, access) to a study, it needs to align with our priorities, which generally include improving husbandry/welfare, or [making discoveries] applicable to wildlife conservation. It is difficult for us to allocate resources to studies whose results don’t have that applicability. It’s often very evident that PIs don’t understand the impact of their requests on husbandry. We often get requests requiring isolation of individuals for observation, or manipulation of social groupings.. .

...Come prepared and transparent, be open minded and flexible, be prepared for it to take a long time for approval as zoos in general tend to move slowly and cautiously .

These quotes underscore the importance of patience and understanding in working with the proposal approval process. Researchers should acknowledge their status as guests and understand that the zoo has the ultimate say in whether a study makes sense for the zoo.

We now turn to the zoo’s suggestions for increasing a positive response or more engagement by the zoo. If a proposal initially did not receive traction, we encourage continuing conversations with the zoo. Conversations may lead to new rationale for the research that would not be initially known to investigators. For example:

Framing the research in terms of enrichment for the animals in question may produce positive responses from the zoo .

Enrichment is the process of providing ex-situ housed animals with stimulation to encourage natural behaviors (such as foraging) that can help to improve or maintain health or fitness. For example, our experiments on feeding elephants different shapes and sizes of foods that would encourage the elephant to use its trunk were considered enrichment.

Mention other zoos that have already been or also will be approached for participation .

If other zoos have rejected a proposal, the researcher should offer that information to reduce the zoo’s effort as they track down the previous work. This procedure is in the same spirit as the cover letter of a journal paper when it is resubmitted to another journal.

Depending on subject matter, keeper staff might actually want to be more involved, so make the offer on how they can participate more fully .

The researcher should be aware when the zoo staff would like to increase the level of collaboration. Zoos may have on staff entire educational teams that visit K–12 schools to discuss the importance of conservation and research at zoos. These programs provide additional collaborative opportunities for academic institutions to develop NSF-style broader impacts for their research.

We found that topics of importance to the zoo depend on the phase of the collaboration. For instance, having research tied to conservation was very low for the research proposal phase but increased in importance in the post-zoo publication phase. Long-term collaborations may require more consistent applications to conservation or enrichment, even if singular or short-term collaborations do not prioritize them as much.

Researchers need to have their own funding plan if they collaborate with a zoo. Although many zoos have interns, and some now have research or animal welfare personnel, there is little to no funding for research for external members of the zoo. The primary resources that the zoo can offer are time and access. As shown by the quotes from participants, keepers and zoo personnel are likely not being compensated for any research being conducted, so researchers need to minimize the time required for zoo personnel to be actively assisting with experimental setup and data collection.

Although our survey results pertain to zoos in the United States, there are many parallels between collaborating with zoos and doing international fieldwork. “Parachute science” or “colonial science” are terms that refer to wealthy researchers going to economically challenged countries to do fieldwork but without proper citations or equitable collaborations ( Roldan-Hernandez et al . 2020 ; Ruppert et al. 2021 ). Many journals now require publications of field studies to feature co-authors included from the place of study ( Pérez-Espona 2021 ). This idea of parachute science is traditionally linked to biodiversity studies in tropical nations but also occurs in zoos ( Stefanoudis et al. 2021 ). Biology journals that include authors affiliated with zoos tend to publish more descriptive literature on species and their behavior, providing more informative results ( Anderson et al. 2008 ). Avoiding parachute science in zoo–university collaborations is as simple as providing due authorship, acknowledgment, and credit in premier journals. Including zoological personnel as co-authors can increase the descriptive nature of the publication, which will be useful to future workers and future collaborations with the zoo.

Personal experiences growing and learning with Zoo Atlanta

The Hu Lab for Biolocomotion has been working with Zoo Atlanta since 2010. We now have many collaborations on research projects proposed by either the Hu Lab or Zoo Atlanta. Our partnership has resulted in over six papers published with the involvement of graduate students (Hamidreza Marvi, Andrew Dickerson, Guillermo Amador, Alexis Noel, Patricia Yang, Marguerite Matherne, Andrew Schulz, and Cassie Shriver), a postdoc (Jia Ning Wu), and many undergraduates. We try to overlap the hiring of new graduate students because training to work with the zoo takes at least a year. This training is best when done one-on-one because the process of IACUC and research approval can be daunting at first. Moreover, having the veteran graduate student introduce the new graduate student to zoo staff helps facilitate future communication and research projects. Zoo Atlanta staff for example prefer in-person over online meetings, and building trust with that staff takes time. We keep records of approved research proposals on file for future graduate students in the group to reference as needed. The graduate students were the main point of contact with zoo staff.

Our collaboration began with work that was non-invasive and most likely to be approved by the zoo. For example, in 2012, we conducted studies involving sprinkling animals with water to watch them shake off water on a hot summer day ( Dickerson et al. 2012 ). One of the reasons we have been able to collaborate in the long run was that the zoo was willing to work with us while we were in the learning phases of collaborating with the zoo. We advise new principal investigators to set up meetings with their universities’ IACUC committees to discuss the timeline of processes. At Georgia Tech, we had two Georgia Tech IACUC staff reach out we began. On the phone, they patiently explained places where I could improve my efficiency and effectiveness in proposal writing. In the long-run, such advice helped tremendously over the years and continues to inform my research today. One mistake we made early on was not communicating to a new graduate student that citations of the zoo should still be made when animals are photographed from the public area ( Amador et al. 2015 ). We have improved our communication in the group to prevent such mistakes in the future. We progressed in 2014 to studying mammal urination ( Yang et al. 2014 ) and tail-swinging ( Matherne et al. 2018 ). These studies were primarily observational and non-invasive, involving little of the zoo personnel’s time and not affecting the animals or their routines in any way. Thus, acknowledgment of the zoo was sufficient to give credit.

When assigning credit to zoo staff, one must keep in mind the organizational structure of the zoo and the complexity of the study. We conducted studies on venomous side-winding snakes that involved zoo staff for safety reasons. We also constructed a unique facility for creating prepared mixtures of sand with fluidized beds on zoo grounds ( Marvi et al. 2014 ). Similarly, studies with elephants involving picking up barbells or different-sized foods required regular planning meetings and the assistance of zoo staff during the experiment ( Schulz et al. 2021 ). These experiments were more complex and required a higher degree of active collaboration with the keepers. Thus, these publications resulted in co-authorship with zoo staff. In addition to research collaboration, graduate students from the Hu Lab often participate in a number of other volunteer events at the zoo, such as presenting at AZA conferences, organizing Biomechanics Day events, giving tours to guests, giving guest lectures, and fund-raising. These activities were often suggested by zoo staff, and our involvement has indicated the level of trust between our two groups.

Ideas for improving zoo–academic collaborations

Currently, collaborations with zoos are too often ad hoc: they emerge from historical contingencies such as long-standing relationships between key individuals. Starting such relationships is a big commitment. In this article, we discussed ways to make this process more efficient when such relationships already exist. In this section, we propose ways to make zoo–university collaborations more common and systematic.

We recommend that researchers who are first-time collaborators with a local zoo should seek mentors who have successfully navigated collaboration before. Mentors can offer to share their IACUC and other zoo protocols, make introductions to zoo staff, and help interpret waiting times and responses by the zoo. Most universities have trained staff that can assist with writing IACUC proposals and making connections. A few minutes on the phone can save several iterations on proposals, and it is often in the IACUC committee’s interest to reduce the number of proposal re-submissions.

Conferences are also an excellent way to meet researchers who have successfully collaborated with a zoo. Zoological organizations have annual AZA conferences where they discuss advances in their protocols for working with animals. The Society of Integrative & Comparitive Biology (SICB) as a community might consider providing travel scholarships and other incentives to encourage students to present their work at AZA conferences. Guidance on working with zoos is particularly relevant now that the public can interact with zoos through social media and the web. These new digital sources make it especially important for researchers to present their work and findings with the varying constraints of the zoo and university in mind.

To form long-lasting and systematic collaborations, both parties need equal commitment, effort, and consent. Zoos throughout the world now have educational departments to help engage in outreach. One way to improve rapport with a zoo is to volunteer to do scientific and conservation outreach as an extension of the research.

There are thousands of zoos and aquariums that can provide opportunities for advanced scientific discoveries. Although research collaborations may bring about challenges, this article highlighted a few simple steps to create more equitable partnerships. We proposed three phases of zoo research and walked researchers through the 10 steps of a successful zoo–university collaboration ( Fig. 2 ). We highlight the importance of transparent communication, acknowledging zoo personnel through co-authorship and acknowledgements, and treating the zookeepers with respect as behavioral experts and collaborators. We hope that the results of this study will improve not just zoo research, but animal conservation as a whole.

AS thanks Georgia Tech Research Institute for funding; CS thanks QBioS Interdisciplinary Graduate Program and the Haley fellowship for funding; Hu thanks the Woodruff Faculty Fellowship.

A.S. came up with the idea and hypothesis for this study as well as assisted in survey creation, data analysis, figure making, and manuscript writing. C.S. created and submitted the IRB protocol and also assisted in survey creation, data analysis, figure making, and manuscript writing. C.A. reviewed the survey and advised from a keeper perspective in addition to helping write the manuscript. E.W. contributed to the survey design and analysis. J.M. III led the zoo research arm of this survey and distribution of the survey to various zoo personnel. D.H. is the corresponding author for this study and assisted with manuscript edits, methodology, and ideation of the survey.

AS thanks Georgia Tech Research Institute for funding; CS thanks QBioS Interdisciplinary Graduate Program and the Haley fellowship for funding; DH thanks the Woodruff Faculty Fellowship. The authors would like to acknowledge R. Moore who assisted early on with edits of the survey and the survey’s contents. We would also like to acknowledge S. Wiech for assistance in distributing the survey to contacts at AZA. We would like to acknowledge all of the zoo personnel that were able to make this study and these findings possible as well as accessible.

J.M. III was the director of research at Zoo Atlanta during this survey. The survey was distributed in a daily zoo email blast without indication that J.M. III would be the corresponding author. There could potentially be a conflict of interest as we have three zoological personnel on this publication and the point of this publication is to advance zoo–academic research collaborations.

The authors currently have reported all statistical values of each survey in the Supplementary Material . Individual survey results will require Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval from Georgia Institute of Technology and Zoo Atlanta to be shared with interested parties.

From the symposium “Best practices for bioinspired design education, research and product development’’ presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology virtual annual meeting, January 3–February 28, 2022.

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Welden HL , Stelvig M , Nielsen CK , Purcell C , Eckley L , Bertelsen MF , Hvilsom C . 2020 . The contributions of EAZA zoos and aquaria to peer-reviewed scientific . J Zoo Aquar Res . 8 : 6 .

Winders D . 2017 . Captive wildlife at a crossroads—sanctuaries, accreditation, and humane-washing . SSRN Scholarly Paper 3296580 , Social Science Research Network, Rochester (NY) .

Yang PJ , Pham J , Choo J , Hu DL . 2014 . Duration of urination does not change with body size . Proc Natl Acad Sci . 111 : 11932 – 7 .

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Zoos and Endangered Species Conservation

A Concerted Effort to Turn Back the Clock on Extinction

Jennifer Bove is an award-winning writer and editor with a background in field biology.

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• Conservation

The world's best zoos offer face-to-face encounters with some of the most fascinating and rare creatures on the planet—an experience that few people would ever be able to pursue in the wild. Unlike the cramped cages that housed wild animals in sideshow spectacles of the past, the modern zoo has elevated habitat emulation to an art, carefully recreating natural environments and offering inhabitants challenging activities to reduce boredom and stress.

The evolution of zoos has also included programs dedicated to protecting endangered species, both in captivity and in the wild. Zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) participate in Species Survival Plan Programs that involve captive breeding, reintroduction programs, public education, and field conservation to ensure survival for many of the planet's threatened and endangered species .

Conservation Breeding

AZA conservation breeding programs (also known as captive breeding programs) are designed to augment populations of endangered species and avoid extinction via regulated breeding in zoos and other approved facilities.

One of the primary challenges facing captive breeding programs is maintaining genetic diversity. If the population of a captive breeding program is too small, inbreeding may result, leading to health problems that can have a negative impact on the species' survival. For this reason, breeding is carefully managed to ensure as much genetic variation as possible.

Six Species Saved From Extinction by Zoos

• Arabian Oryx: Hunted to extinction in the wild, the Arabian Oryx was revitalized thanks to conservation efforts by the Phoenix Zoo and other organizations. As of 2017, 1,000 animals had been restored to the wild, while thousands more were living in zoo environments.
• Przewalski’s Horse: The only truly wild species left in the world, Przewalski’s Horse is native to the grasslands of Central Asia. After being declared completely extinct in the wild, it’s made an amazing comeback.
• California Condor: Not all that long ago, there were only 27 of these magnificent birds left. Thanks to conservation efforts from the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo, hundreds of California Condors have been reintroduced into the wild.
• Bongo: The Eastern Bongo, a large antelope native to a remote region of Kenya was one of the last large mammal species to be discovered but poaching and loss of habitat nearly wiped them out. Zoos worldwide are working to establish a stable population to ensure their survival.
• Panamanian Golden Frog:  Beautiful but extremely poisonous, the entire species succumbed to the effects of a devastating fungal disease in the wild. Since 2007, existing captive populations abetted by collaborative conservation efforts by a number of zoos have staved off their extinction.
• Golden Lion Tamarin: Close to extinction due to loss of habitat from logging and mining, as well as poaching in its native Brazil, there has been a steady effort since the 1980s to ensure this species doesn’t vanish from the face of the Earth. Currently, about one-third of wild Golden Lion Tamarins come from breeding programs.

Source: Taronga Conservation Society Australia

Reintroduction Programs

The goal of reintroduction programs is to release animals that have been raised or rehabilitated in zoos back into their natural habitats. AZA describes these programs as "powerful tools used for stabilizing, re-establishing, or increasing in situ animal populations that have suffered significant declines."

In cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the IUCN Species Survival Commission , AZA-accredited institutions have established reintroduction programs for endangered animals such as the black-footed ferret , California condor, freshwater mussel, and Oregon spotted frog.

Public Education

Zoos educate millions of visitors each year about endangered species and related conservation issues. Over the past 10 years, AZA-accredited institutions have also trained more than 400,000 teachers with award-winning science curricula.

A nationwide study including more than 5,500 visitors from 12 AZA-accredited institutions found that visits to zoos and aquariums prompt individuals to reconsider their role in environmental problems and see themselves as part of the solution.

Field Conservation

Field conservation focuses on the long-term survival of species in natural ecosystems and habitats. Zoos participate in conservation projects that support studies of populations in the wild, species recovery efforts, veterinary care for wildlife disease issues, and conservation awareness.

Success Stories

Today, 31 animal species classified as "Extinct in the Wild" are being bred in captivity. Reintroduction efforts are underway for some of these species, including the Hawaiian crow. According to a 2021 study published in the journal Conservation Letters , at least 20 bird and nine mammal species have been saved from extinction through conservation breeding and reintroduction efforts since 1993.

The Future of Zoos and Captive Breeding

A study recently published in the journal Science supports the establishment of specialized zoos and a network of captive breeding programs that target species facing an acute risk of extinction. "Specialization generally increases breeding success. The animals can be 'parked' at these zoos until they have a chance of survival in the natural environment and can then be returned to the wild," the study's lead researchers told Science Daily. Endangered species breeding programs will also help scientists better understand population dynamics critical to the management of animals in the wild.

Willoughby, Janna R., et al. “ Inbreeding and Selection Shape Genomic Diversity in Captive Populations: Implications for the Conservation of Endangered Species .” PLoS ONE , vol. 12, 2017, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0175996

“ Reintroduction Programs .” Association of Zoos & Aquariums .

“ Conservation Education .” Association of Zoos & Aquariums .

“ Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter: Assessing the Impact of a Visit to a Zoo or Aquarium .” Association of Zoos & Aquariums .

“ Hawaiian Crow Corvus Hawaiiensis .” Bird Life International .

Bolam, Friederike C. et al. " How Many Bird And Mammal Extinctions Has Recent Conservation Action Prevented? ".  Conservation Letters , vol 14, no. 1, 2020, doi:10.1111/conl.12762.

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. " Biodiversity conservation: Zoos urged to breed animals from threatened populations. " ScienceDaily, 17 March 2011.

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The Conservation Mission of Zoos

Nabila comes from a background in biosciences and natural resource management and has worked on community-based resource mapping and conservation projects in the Himalayan regions of India and Nepal. She also worked as a business analyst with the International Species Information System (now called Species360 ), and was part of the team that developed standards on different animal and enclosure parameters. In this blog, Nabila considers the human fascination with animals – which starts very early in childhood – and the millions of people that visit zoos around the world each year to observe wildlife, as she explores the conservation mission of zoos.

History and Evolution of Zoos in a nutshell ?

This fascination for observing wild animals in captivity goes way back in time. Evidence of private menageries owned by ancient Egyptian kings and aristocrats puts them as early as 2500 BCE . They were later transformed into public institutions in the 1700s. The late 18th and early 19th century witnessed the formation of zoological societies such as the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The 1900s saw the emergence of the modern zoo concept. Since the 1980s, zoos developed coordinated breeding programmes that brought dozens of animals (for example the golden lion tamarin of Brazil), back from the brink of extinction. Along with this transformation of zoos over the past few centuries, there was a parallel evolution in the role of zoos and they went from being purely recreational to incorporating elements of research and conservation into their agenda.

Zoos and Conservation ?

A study by Patricia et al., 2007 states that conservation and education are key elements in the mission statements of zoos. A survey conducted by The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) , revealed that the general public rate conservation and education as the most important roles of zoos (Fraser and Stickler 2008) . Most zoos mention conservation and education in their mission statements suggesting that these are rather important aspects of zoo culture.

So how do zoos help conservation? Zoos primarily deal with three aspects of conservation – practice, advocacy and research. Conservation practice entails captive breeding, species reintroduction programs, Species survival plans and the use of zoo revenue for conservation programs in the wild. Conservation advocacy includes public engagement, promoting awareness, advocating stewardship, and fundraising events and schemes – a good example of which is the ‘Adopt an Animal’ scheme at most modern zoos. Moreover, conservation research is conducted on wildlife biology, population dynamics, animal behaviour, health and welfare and there are also publications generated by zoos on animal care and captivity.

Zoos benefit conservation not only through direct efforts such as captive breeding, wild survival training and reintroduction, but also in indirect ways.

Nearly fifty percent of world’s people live in cities disconnected from nature and in such cities, zoos and aquariums have a great potential to win huge support for wildlife preservation. In order to instil conservation sense in the general public, it is important to educate them about animals, their behaviour, habitat, population changes, and why they need to be conserved.

In 2011, Conde et al. conducted a study aimed at estimating the total number of species in the world held in captivity and in order to do that they used the database from the International Species Information System (ISIS) (now called Species360 ) – the most comprehensive database on zoos and aquariums in the world. They obtained the threat category of each species from the database and it turns out that ISIS zoos hold nearly 15 per cent of the total IUCN threatened species in the world. However, the drawback here is that most ISIS zoos are concentrated in the temperate regions whereas most threatened species are tropical. Clearly there is a mismatch between the areas where the captive populations are held and their native ranges/habitats. Unfortunately, there are still large parts of the world with high biodiversity value whose zoos are not represented in the global zoo network.

Zoos do a lot for conservation. There are dedicated species survival programs which have helped species come out from the brink of extinction, good examples of that being the black-footed ferrets, the red wolves, the Przewalski’s wild horse, and the California condors. After 10 years of working to strengthen the population of the endangered California condor , Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Zoo, were able to rebuild a population of fewer than two dozen birds to around 170. Successful breeding programs brought the Pere David’s deer back from extinction. Though this Asian deer became extinct in the wild, Chinese and European zoo programs enabled four of these deer to be released back into the wild in 1985, where they are now self-sustaining. These are just a few examples. The World Association of Zoos and Aquarium (WAZA)’s members are spending nearly US$ 350 million per year on conservation projects in the wild, making WAZA the third largest contributor to conservation in the world.

However, certain species have not been so fortunate – their reintroduction programs have failed for different reasons. Examples of such species include the Andean condor, the western lowland gorilla, the giant panda and the snow leopard. Of 145 reintroduction programs carried out by zoos in the last century, only 16 truly succeeded in restoring wild animal populations to the wild. Nonetheless, zoos are continuing to make efforts to help endangered species in every way they can. The Guardian newspaper highlighted the  top ten species fighting extinction with the help of zoos,  the nine animals (also included in the ten was Tanzania’s Verdcourt’s polyalthia tree) chosen from hundreds of zoo-backed conservation programmes were: the blue-crowned laughing thrush (China), mountain chicken frog (Dominica), the white-clawed crayfish (United Kingdom), the Amur Leopard (Russia), the Potosi pupfish (Mexico), Partula Snails (French Polynesia), the blue-eyed black Lemur (Madagascar), the Ploughshare Tortoise (Madagascar) and the scimitar-horned oryx (North Africa).

Zoo Pros and Cons ?

So even though zoos are doing their best to conserve species both ex-situ and in-situ, there are pros and cons of captive breeding. The pros include restoring population of threatened species or those losing habitats, maintaining numbers and genetic diversity through periodic release, research on captives and formulating new strategies for conserving wild species. Research on captive animals increases knowledge of animal biology, genetics, behaviour, interactions, food habits etc. Zoos engage in research, preserve biodiversity (genetic and species) that may be threatened or at times even extinct in the wild, and they provide much needed funding for research and conservation projects across the world. They also provide inspiration and fascination for children who very often get to interact with and learn about nature and wildlife only at zoos. On the flip side, the negatives of captive breeding are the heavy costs involved, the possibility of inbreeding depression, and only a limited portion of the gene pool being conserved. Sometimes zoos have to compromise the crucial skills for wild survival and captive breeding can also affect animal health and well-being.

There are certain points that all captive breeding programs need to consider to minimize any negative impacts on animals held in zoos.

Firstly, these programs should not be seen as an ’emergency room treatment’ – they should not be resorted to when there are only ten individuals left in the wild but much earlier than that. Secondly, all captive breeding programs should ideally be carried out in the country of species’ origin making sure to engage the local communities as well. In the case of the Arabian oryx, its reintroduction program in Oman had failed because the community was not sufficiently involved.

The historical debate on zoos ?

There has been a great deal of debate going around zoos and they have faced plenty of criticism on welfare and ethical issues. While some people argue that zoos play an important role in conservation and research, others counter that they do more harm than good. However, the good news is that in a recent survey (Fraser & Sickler, 2008) conducted across WAZA zoos, only nice percent of the surveyed population felt that zoos are inhumane and animal captivity is wrong. Most of them held a positive opinion and felt that zoos care for their animals. All of WAZA’s 1,400 zoos have to abide by the WAZA Code of Ethics and Welfare . Most modern zoos set up naturalistic enclosures to give animals a feel of their natural habitat and design enrichment programs to emulate the natural behaviour of the captive animal. The vet departments at zoos also take care of animal health and well-being and treat sick or injured animals not only in captivity but also in the wild.

Challenges zoos face and potential solutions ?

Zoos face some serious challenges, the main one being how to balance the public experience with conservation. For most zoos, it is a challenge to be a force for conservation while continuing to put up a show. Another big challenge is prioritizing animals to be saved because very often there are too many animals in need of help and very little room and resources available with zoos. This forces zoos to make bitter choices at times. For example, American zoos are soon planning to drop the ion-tailed macaques even though there are only 4,000 left in the wild in the tropical rainforests of India. The macaques are being phased out because they can carry a form of herpes potentially deadly to humans. In order to house more animals of a single species for maintaining a viable population, zoos are forced to drop others. In another instance, the Mhor gazelles that had been squeezed out of the Saharan grassland by increased cattle ranching had to be phased out by the St.Louis Zoo because with only 50 of these left in American zoos, there was not enough genetic diversity without the risk of inbreeding depression. Zoos prioritize animals for conservation based on the following criteria: the animal must be endangered; it must have an important ecological role; and it should have a captive population big enough to grow the population without inbreeding. Another challenge zoos face is funding constraints which often tend to interfere with conservation efforts. Lastly, there is a potential danger from destruction caused by natural disturbances especially when zoos and aquariums are concentrated distribution of animals from all over the world.

So how do zoos overcome these challenges? For starters, they must choose quality over quantity. They should try and devote more resources to a chosen few rather than trying to conserve too many species together. Zoos should specialize in breeding a few at-risk targeted species rather than aiming to increase its species diversity as specialization increases breeding success. They should think beyond the visual appeal by placing less emphasis on attractive charismatic animals which are doing fine in the wild (for example the African Elephant and California sea lions) and focus more on animals in more urgent need of conservation (Monfort, 2012) . They should try and publicize their conservation credentials in more detail on their websites and through social media (Carr & Cohen, 2011) . They should try and work as a network because there is still a decent percentage (nearly 83 per cent) that needs to be represented in the global zoo network and it is important that they do that because membership to a regional association does influence their conservation effectiveness. After membership, the benefits in terms of conservation activity outweigh the monetary (membership) costs (Fabregas, 2011) . Zoos should also make efforts to expand their conservation department since its small size often hampers conservation programmes (Miller, et al., 2004). They should try and provide more room to animals to increase their natural reproductive behaviour (Monfort, 2012). They should also strengthen their record keeping system because good records are really the backbone of effective management of any zoological collection (Fabregas, 2011) . Lastly, zoos should try and move beyond the reintroduction paradigm because single species programs can often divert attention from ecosystem conservation (Zimmerman, et al., 2009) .

Miller et al. has come up with a list of indicators that can be really handy for zoos for improving their conservation performance:

Does conservation thought define policy decisions?

Is there sufficient organizational funding for conservation activities?

Is there a functional conservation department?

Does the institution advocate for conservation?

Do conservation education programs effectively target children and adults?

Does the institution contribute directly to habitat protection locally and internationally?

Do exhibits explain and promote conservation efforts?

Do internal policies and activities protect the environment?

According to Fabregas et al., 2011 , some key factors that influence conservation mission of zoos include the location of the zoo; the membership of a zoo association; and their record keeping practices. Private zoos and member zoos and those with a good record-keeping system are likely to contribution better to conservation.

It’s a never-ending debate on whether zoos are good or bad for animals.

In the end, it really depends on what zoo is in consideration. It also depends on whether we are referring to the well-being of a single animal held in a zoo or an animal in its actual home far away benefiting from the zoo’s research and conservation efforts. In a nutshell, zoos cannot be considered panacea for biodiversity conservation but there is enough scientific evidence to suggest they do play a critical role and have a great potential for conserving endangered species.

Image © B575 [CC BY-SA 3.0] Wikimedia Commons, Przewalski’s wild horses in El Paso Zoo – they narrowly avoided extinction thanks to worldwide zoo breeding programmes and are now being re-introduced to the wild

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How Zoos Benefit Society And The Animals They Protect

The benefits of zoos to local communities and to society in general are largely underestimated by the wider population

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Sun parrots (Aratinga solstitialis) eating food from the open hand of a member of the public in a ... [+] walk-in aviary at a zoo. Experiences such as these add greatly to people's sense of well-being as well as their desire to conserve wildlife.

Zoos, aquariums and aviaries are amongst the most popular tourist attractions in the world, with more than 700 million visitors annually. (Throughout this piece, I will collectively refer to zoos, aquariums and aviaries as ‘zoos’.) This staggering number of visitors alone suggests that these institutions have a unique platform for reaching the public, but — surprisingly — the benefits of zoos to society are generally underestimated.

In addition to making important contributions to nature conservation and to applied animal science, a newly published study finds that zoos also have an important role in how human society perceives and cares about the natural world.

To understand how zoos affect their human neighbors, an international team of researchers from the UK, Ireland and France conducted in-depth reviews of work done by zoos and catalogued zoo strategies for how they meet their four main goals — conservation, education, recreation and research (Figure 1).

F I G U R E 1 : Wider integration of the zoo’s aims helps to expand the societal impact they have ... [+] both over visitors directly and human populations further afield. (doi:10.3390/jzbg4010006)

As part of this study, the researchers also went online to assess the presence of zoos there and how well they meet their four established goals, to examine zoo publications, and the activities that they support. After analyzing this work, the researchers proposed that a fifth goal should be added to modern zoos’ established goals: human well-being. Human well-being, they argue, would greatly add to zoos’ wider societal value ( ref ) by providing a more complete picture of the obligations of modern zoos to the animals in their care and to nature as well as to their human visitors and workforce.

“A zoo is more than a place of entertainment and a collection of animals”, said animal behavior scientist Paul Rose, a Lecturer at the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour and Psychology at the University of Exeter , and senior author of the new study. “Zoos allow us to experience nature and are a great resource for understanding more about conservation, biodiversity and sustainability, as well as bringing many positive benefits to human mental health and well-being.”

People’s well-being could improve as the result of engaging with a zoo’s collection of animals and plants, as well as experiencing the green spaces that a zoo manages. It can also be enhanced by accessibility to education about biodiversity and nature that is essential to inspire long-term, planet-friendly behavioral changes.

“We believe that a well-being aim covers both animal welfare and societal well-being and incentivises zoos to strive for better animal welfare and provide meaningful connection to nature to benefit humans that come into contact with the zoo’s work”, Dr Rose tweeted on Twitter ( here ).

And not to be underestimated is the fact that for many residents of high-density urban areas, zoos may be the only real connection they have with the natural world.

“We need places of conservation, such as zoos, to provide us with the education and understanding about the natural world, and for us to be educated, the aims of the zoos need to incorporate increased and meaningful engagement with society and local communities”, Dr Rose said in a statement.

Dr Rose and his collaborators suggest that further studying the wider impact of zoos on their local communities and on human populations and behavior more generally could help better integrate the relevance of a zoo’s animal collection and its needs, along with the needs, wants and ideals of people.

One of the main strengths of zoos, as I see it, is their combinations of attractive live animal displays with creative educational messaging, such that zoos have the opportunity to influence their visitors, eliciting actions and encouraging them to change their behavior to help conserve wildlife. Further, visiting immersive, naturalistic exhibits in zoos can improve human health and well-being, both physiologically and psychologically.

There is still more work to be done and many questions to investigate, such as evaluating the effect of educational messages on the community, and whether the zoos’ messages are influencing human behavior towards biodiversity, planetary health and sustainability issues.

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Phillip J. Greenwell, Lisa M. Riley, Ricardo Lemos de Figueiredo , James E. Brereton , Andrew Mooney and Paul E. Rose (2023). The Societal Value of the Modern Zoo: A Commentary on How Zoos Can Positively Impact on Human Populations Locally and Globally , Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens , 4 (1):53-69 | doi: 10.3390/jzbg4010006

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5 ways your zoo uses science every day

Posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2017

From daily care of the animals at the Zoo to advanced research of husbandry, behavior and diet that is used to set standards for animal welfare, the Zoo’s research and animal care staffs use science in ways big and small.

Here are five ways your Zoo uses science every day.

What ways do you see science in action at your Zoo?

Giraffe research and Memoirs photos courtesy of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

Blog originally posted April 2017. Updated April 2018.

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Conservation, animal behaviour, and human-animal relationship in zoos. Why is animal welfare so important?

Isabel escobar-ibarra , daniel mota-rojas , fernando gual-sill , carlos r. sánchez , fidel baschetto , maría alonso-spilsbury.

Although zoos are committed to wildlife conservation and have a long-term positive impact on visitors’ attitudes towards wildlife, the question of whether maintaining wild animals in human care is justified remains as animal welfare concerns grow and human understanding of animal intelligence and capacities broadens. Zoos have always been the subject of debate, with conflicts between those who argue they save endangered species and educate visitors, and animal rights activists who believe that conditions of wild animals are inadequate and that zoos should not exist. In this review, we do not discuss the moral side of the issue, but the scientific one. This manuscript aims to show the scope of literature available on the strengths and weaknesses of modern zoos regarding wild animal welfare. We provide information useful to argue why zoos are important in modern society and factors that influence welfare are examined. Some potentially stressful stimuli may diminish animal welfare in zoo animals, while some of the benefits zoos offer to conservation and science include the opportunity to study and learn about different aspects necessary to improve management practices; the possibility of breeding wild animals in zoos has been a key factor in the recovery of species that have improved their conservation status. Animal welfare is an essential part of wildlife conservation, so efforts should be directed to ensure the best possible quality of life and optimum conditions of all zoo animals in our care.

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Zimmermann A (2010) The role of zoos in contributing to in situ conservation. In: Kleiman D, Thompson K, Baer K (ed) Wild Mammals in Captivity: Principles and Techniques for Zoo Management, 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 268-287.

Zoo and Aquarium Association Animal Welfare (2020) Assessment Tool; Zoo and Aquarium Association Australasia Accreditation 2020. https://www.zooaquarium.org.au/index.php/accreditation-2020/ . Accessed on: April 27, 2020. 

Zwijacz-Kozica T, Selva N, Barja I, Silván G, Martínez-Fernández L, Illers JC, Jodlowski M (2013) Concentration of fecal cortisol metabolites in chamois in relation to tourist pressure in Tartra National Park (South Poland). Acta Theriologica 58:215-22.

Submitted date: 10/02/2020

Accepted date: 10/26/2020

J. Anim. Behav. Biometeorol.

• Future Perfect

Zoos aren’t for animals. They’re for us.

Zoos say they’re leaders in protecting wildlife. But is it true?

by Kenny Torrella

This week, a leading wildlife conservation group declared that zoos play an essential role in protecting wild species from extinction.

“Zoos, aquariums and botanic gardens are critical conservation partners, and their role should not be under-valued, under-recognized or misunderstood,” the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a nonprofit that’s assessed extinction threat levels for more than 150,000 species, announced in a new position statement . “For anyone who questions the value of zoos in the modern age, IUCN’s position is clear — zoos are essential.”

It’s a bold statement from an authoritative voice on wildlife protection, but is it true? An examination of how zoos spend their money suggests that, despite branding themselves as champions of conservation, they devote far more resources to their main, original prerogative: confining animals for entertainment and profit.

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“The way that zoos have been trying to justify their existence for quite a few years now is pointing to conservation,” said Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. “But the reality is that it’s really a very small fraction of their funding that is going to field conservation.” (Disclosure: This summer, I attended a media fellowship program at Vermont Law and Graduate School.)

In 2022, most of the 238 zoos and aquariums accredited by the nonprofit Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) spent a collective $252 million on field conservation — efforts to protect and preserve wildlife habitats. That’s serious money for the broader conservation movement.

“That puts them collectively among the world’s largest contributors to conservation,” Daniel Ashe, president and CEO of the AZA, told Vox. However, it’s just 5 percent of how much zoos and aquariums spent on operations and construction alone in 2018.

Similarly, an analysis of scientific papers published by AZA member institutions from 1993 to 2013 found that only 7 percent were related to biodiversity conservation.

Zoos argue that in addition to their conservation efforts in the field, their very existence contributes to species conservation. By breeding animals in captivity, and preserving their genetic material in “ biobanks ,” the argument goes, they’ve created a stock of animals — known as “insurance populations” — who could be released back into nature if wild populations dwindle to alarming levels.

Emma Marris, an environmental writer and author of Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World , wrote in a 2021 New York Times opinion piece that it’s “as if they might be called upon at any moment to release them, like Noah throwing open the doors to the ark, into a waiting wild habitat. But that day of release never quite seems to come.”

“I’m very skeptical that a lot of these captive breeding programs have any practical relevance to conserving species in their natural habitat, which, in my view, is the point of conservation,” said Mickey Pardo, a behavioral ecologist and postdoctoral research fellow at Colorado State University who studies elephants in the wild. The reason, Pardo says, is because reintroduction stemming from captive breeding programs is incredibly challenging and thus rare , and it’s not the primary goal of most captive breeding programs to begin with.

There are some exceptions , Marris notes, in which zoos have played a starring role in reintroducing threatened and endangered species to the wild, including the California condor, the Arabian oryx, and Black-footed ferrets, among others. Ashe told me zoos have played a role in dozens and dozens of reintroduction programs, though he didn’t have a specific number. It’s important work and should be celebrated, as should zoos’ contributions to field conservation. But, Pardo says, it doesn’t justify AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums keeping wild animals in captivity who are not part of any current reintroduction program nor likely to become part of one in the future.

Currently, AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums have about 780,000 animals .

Kira Mileham, IUCN’s global director of strategic partnerships, disagrees with the argument that field conservation is all that matters. Mileham told Vox captive breeding programs at zoos do more than just create insurance populations, and that they contribute to field conservation by providing opportunities for researchers to learn about species’ behavior, nutrition, veterinary needs, and more. Mileham added that zoos also play an important role in temporary rescue and “ head start ” efforts by, say, taking animals and/or their eggs that are facing a serious, temporary threat out of the wild, and then returning them when it’s safe.

Zoos undeniably do some good work for species conservation; however, that work can obscure their dark side: the suffering of animals in captivity.

Life at the zoo

Animals who, in their natural habitats, would travel great distances are resigned to living in film-set versions of lush rainforests and vast savannas while surrounded by city noise. As a result of the lack of stimulation and small environments, some animals will develop “stereotypic” behavior , in which they engage in repetitive motions that are rare in the wild.

Researchers call it “zoochosis,” a play on “psychosis,” though making enclosures a little nicer and providing “enrichment activities” to animals both help, as do pharmaceutical drugs .

There was Gus, the Central Park Zoo polar bear who would swim figure eights in his pool for sometimes up to 12 hours a day (his enclosure was just 0.00009 percent of his range in the wild), and Sukari , the giraffe at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, who for hours would lick steel cables, walls, and gates. Other animals pace, rock back and forth, and head-bob, or engage in self-harm, like pulling out their hair or biting themselves. There are many stories of escape attempts.

Despite it all, AZA-accredited zoos keep acquiring more animals, either from other zoos, breeding them on their own, taking them from the wild (how 80 percent of animals at AZA-accredited aquariums are acquired, Ashe told me), as rescues, or from a number of other sources, such as private breeders and hunting ranches.

Mileham refutes the notion that many zoos are just acquiring animals at the expense of their welfare, however: “I don’t think [leading zoos] kind of flippantly trade off the welfare of species for the sake of having them in their facilities,” she said. And not every welfare matter is black and white, Mileham said. For instance, some animals in zoos might have come from areas with high levels of conflict with humans. “We can’t pretend that an animal in the wild always has a perfect life and has no welfare compromises just because they happen to not be in human care.”

Ashe assured me that “when you see animals at AZA member institutions, you’re seeing animals that are thriving there.” He went on to say, “I understand some people just don’t like the idea of any animal in a state of confinement, and in those cases, we just have a fundamental disagreement.”

When Marris asked Ashe about the constraints of captivity, Ashe largely shrugged the problem away, saying that, well, everyone has constraints put on them: “We are all captive in some regards to social and ethical and religious and other constraints on our life and our activities.”

I asked Ashe about this quote, and he said, “It’s factually true — we all live with constraint in our social life and we agree to constraint so we have social order.” He’s right, of course, that it’s true for humans, but there’s a glaring omission in his response: Animals can’t agree to the constraints we impose on them.

I can’t think of a more dissatisfying answer to the ethical dilemma of putting hundreds of thousands of wild animals behind glass. But it does reveal that the ideology undergirding earlier zoos and aquariums largely persists today — that animals are here for us, not with us.

Zoos: What are they good for?

Zoos justify their existence not just through conservation, but also by their educational work. Their actual impact in that domain, however, is likely minor.

The AZA says one of the “superpowers” of its 238 accredited zoos and aquariums is that they have “the opportunity to influence and inspire the 200 million people who visit every year.” On its face, it makes sense: If everyone could just see the beauty of the animal kingdom up close and learn about the plight of threatened species, they might be inspired to support or get involved in conservation work. Surely, zoos have that effect on some, but there’s no evidence it’s the case for many.

On the contrary , most people don’t read the educational plaques at zoos, and according to polls of zoo-goers, most go to spend time with friends or family — to enjoy themselves and be entertained, not to learn about animals and their needs. One study found the level of environmental concern reported by attendees before they entered the zoo was similar to those who were polled at the exits.

While the educational value of zoos is dubious, there’s certainly one message zoo-goers receive, if only implicitly: That it’s perfectly fine, even good , to put wild animals on display in tiny enclosures for the public’s leisure. In other words, animals — even if they’re suffering right in front of us — can be objects of entertainment.

“It’s rooted in this notion that yes, we have this privileged right to observe these animals at any cost to [them] or to their species more generally, and it’s deeply troubling,” Winders said.

The idea that we must exploit some animals in order to protect others creates a bizarre false choice, even when there are much more humane paths taken by others in the wildlife protection movement, like animal sanctuaries .

What a more humane zoo could look like

Animal sanctuaries are like zoos in that they’re large properties where animals live in captivity, but they differ in every other way. For one, animals in sanctuaries tend to have far more space than animals in zoos, and they’re there to live on their own terms, not to be put on display for an entrance fee. Some sanctuaries are not open to the public, while others conduct small tours or have much smaller attendance numbers than the typical zoo. (Beware, however, that many operations call themselves sanctuaries but in reality are more like petting zoos .)

The Wild Animal Sanctuary, a 45-minute drive from Denver, Colorado, provides a compelling example of how animals can better coexist with visitors. The 1,214-acre operation, home to rescued bears, tigers, lions, wolves, and other species, was closed to the public for its first 20 years. But in the early 2000s, it began to open up to visitors, who can only see the animals from the sanctuary’s observation decks and more than 1.5 miles of elevated walkways, causing less disturbance than zoo-goers.

Animals typically wind up in sanctuaries — the ethical kind, at least — because they were abandoned or injured, rather than bred, purchased, or taken from the wild. The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, the animal sanctuary world’s equivalent to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, takes the position that captive breeding is only permitted if it’s done for eventual reintroduction into the wild — unlike zoos, which largely breed animals as insurance populations and to keep a steady supply to put on display.

Some critics have called for zoos to phase out keeping animals from species that aren’t either critically endangered or extinct in the wild, or for which there’s no viable reintroduction program. Additionally, they argue, urban zoos should either close down or set limits on how many animals they keep.

I would add one more thing that zoos — and sanctuaries, for that matter — could do: Stop serving meat and dairy in their cafeterias. There’s the painfully obvious point that an institution whose mission is to protect animals probably shouldn’t sell animal meat . But there’s also this: One-third of Earth’s habitable land is devoted to cattle grazing and growing corn and soy to feed farmed animals, which has resulted in mass habitat loss for wildlife and crashing biodiversity levels. Meat production is the leading cause of global deforestation , and thus the leading threat to wildlife habitats.

Reforming zoos won’t be easy, and arguably, a lot of conservation dollars might vanish if zoos looked different. But it says something about the conservation movement, and us, if one of the best ways to raise funds for wild animals is to put them in captivity. I don’t have the answers for how the conservation movement could supercharge its funding in lieu of the significant amount of funding zoos provide, but I think it’s clear, as Marris puts it, that zoos are not worth the moral cost .

As our understanding of animal sentience and their capacity for suffering has grown, our economy has slowly adapted. Fashion designers are replacing leather and fur with animal-free textiles, meat companies are now selling plant-based nuggets and burgers, and in 2018, the traveling circus Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey announced it would stop using animals, such as lions, tigers, and bears, in its shows. Zoos, too, could reinvent themselves for a more enlightened age by focusing on what animals need, not what the public wants to do on a Saturday afternoon.

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Five ways to wellbeing at the zoo: improving human health and connection to nature

1 Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

2 WWT, Slimbridge Wetland Centre, Slimbridge, United Kingdom

3 Centre for Animal Welfare, University of Winchester, Winchester, United Kingdom

Good mental and physical health go hand-in-hand when identifying factors that lead people to experience a better overall quality of life. A growing disconnect to the natural world is worsening the mental health of individuals in many societies. Numerous scientific publications have evidenced that being in nature and access to green and blue spaces positively impact upon humans’ physical and mental health. For many people, particularly those living in more urbanized areas, managed natural spaces and borrowed landscapes, such as those found in public parks, wildlife reserves and zoological gardens give the only opportunities for wider engagement with nature. Many zoos are designated green spaces and therefore human visitors can engage with native fauna and flora as well as exotic wild animals. This article reviews the UK Government’s “The Five Ways to Wellbeing” concept, applied to zoos and aquariums and thus suggests how zoos and aquariums can use this framework to promote positive nature-connectivity experiences for their visitors and promote good wellbeing. The Five Ways to Wellbeing are Connect, Be active, Take notice, Keep learning, and Give. We illustrate how zoos and aquariums could model their approaches to educational and engagement roles, as well as design initiatives to reach out to local communities via the Five Ways to Wellbeing concept. We show that many of the positive programs and works conducted by zoos and aquariums lend themselves to further engagement with the Five Ways to Wellbeing structure. By taking such a structured approach in the design, implementation and evaluation of their activities, zoos can expand their abilities in connecting humans with nature and further add value to their living collections of animals and plants. By including Wellbeing as a defined aim of the modern zoo, it will be clear to all of those involved in their work, visitors, workers, stakeholders, that zoos are working to promote, protect and preserve positive wellbeing outputs for humans and animals alike.

1. Introduction

There is a global crisis around mental health ( Patel et al., 2007 ; Tiwari, 2023 ), in part caused by contemporary challenges to living ( Jakovljevic et al., 2020 ) modern ways of communicating and living ( Kelly et al., 2018 ; Smith and Victor, 2019 ), and a widespread disconnection with nature and the natural world ( Gelsthorpe, 2017 ). Access to nature has been shown to promote positive wellbeing and alleviate mild depression and anxiety in humans ( Bratman et al., 2012 ; Keenan et al., 2021 ; Owens and Bunce, 2022 ; Irvine et al., 2023 ). As global populations continue to urbanize ( United Nations, 2018 ), causing greater distance between centers of human habitation and wild environments ( Cox et al., 2018 ), managed green and blue spaces (e.g., public parkland and gardens and nature-themed visitor attractions such as zoological collections) become more important to fostering a sense of “being in nature” ( Baur and Tynon, 2010 ; Kellert, 2012 ; Arbuthnott et al., 2014 ; Taylor and Duram, 2021 ). Institutions that are ultimately centered on bringing nature closer to humans are zoological collections, such as zoos, aquariums, and safari parks (hereafter “zoos”). Although the number is hard to accurately define, there are an estimated 10,000 zoological collections globally ( Glazier, 2017 ). A smaller proportion of this overall estimate will be part of accreditation (e.g., European Association of Zoos & Aquaria, EAZA; Association of Zoos & Aquariums, AZA) or membership (British & Irish Association of Zoos & Aquariums) organizations that uphold education, conservation and research initiatives and promote good animal welfare ( Marcy, 2021 ; BIAZA, 2023a ; EAZA, 2023a ). Modern zoos are consistently aiming to promote both animal welfare and positive human wellbeing in terms of their outputs and operations ( Rose and Riley, 2022 ) and therefore have value to the human populations that work at them, live around them, visit them and engage with their work on a local or global level ( Greenwell et al., 2023 ). This value can be extended if zoo visits can enhance mental health, encourage a deeper understanding of nature, and foster a greater appreciation of the natural world.

The UK government defines the concept of human wellbeing as comprising of two main elements: feeling good and functioning well ( CIEEM, 2021 ). This approach is similar to that outlined by the World Health Organization, who state that wellbeing is a positive state experienced by individuals and societies, that is important for daily life, and encompasses quality of life and the activities that people can get involved in World Health Organisation (2023) . Therefore, enhancing opportunities to be outdoors with nature, and to engage with others whilst undertaking meaningful and fulfilling activities promotes these good feelings and positive physical and mental functions ( Nisbet et al., 2011 ; Bratman et al., 2012 ; Cudworth and Lumber, 2021 ), which are the core of wellbeing.

An example of an approach to enhance human wellbeing to improve overall quality of life can be found in the Five Ways (or Steps) to Wellbeing that were published in 2008 by the New Economics Foundation on behalf of the UK Government ( Aked et al., 2008b ). This project was initiated to understand ways of promoting improvements to mental wellbeing in individual people and across society more widely, and of enhancing mental capital (i.e., a person’s cognitive and emotional resources). The Five Ways to Wellbeing are to Connect, Be active, Take notice, Keep learning, and Give ( Aked et al., 2008b ) and these are outlined in Figure 1 . As a framework for evaluating human wellbeing, The Five Ways to Wellbeing have featured in several publications relating to human wellbeing and nature connectivity, including peer-reviewed research papers ( Chiumento et al., 2018 ) and mainstream psychology publications ( Harkness, 2019 ). And they have also been used within research, methodologies designed to measure good human wellbeing and improvements to quality of life, across numerous other disciplines in different parts of the world ( Mahoney-Davies et al., 2017 ; Mackay et al., 2019 ; Gillard et al., 2021 ; Coren et al., 2022 ). The principles of the Five Ways to Wellbeing have been endorsed by the UK’s mental health charity, “Mind” ( Mind, 2023 ) and are also widely advertised by the UK’s National Health Service as part of its mental health provision ( National Health Service, 2022 ). Therefore, the Five Ways to Wellbeing approach is clearly seen as a credible formula for helping to provide practical support and tools to improve both individual and societal quality of life.

The Five Ways to Wellbeing as described by the New Economic Foundation with an example of how they integrate into a visit to a zoological collection.

This article considers the key concepts of the Five Ways to Wellbeing and the role of zoos in providing meaningful connection to nature, opportunities to engage and interact with other individuals in a positive and constructive manner, and ways of getting involved in pro-conservation activities and initiatives. Promoting a connection to nature is essential if green and blue prescribing (nature-based interventions and activities prescribed to restore positive mental states, National Health Service, 2022 ) is to be wholly effective. It is centered in the concepts of green / blue prescribing that can offer treatment for mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression ( Owens and Bunce, 2022 ; Irvine et al., 2023 ) and that zoos could get involved with. This is the first time (to the authors’ knowledge) that zoos as potential sites to embed the Five Ways to Wellbeing has been explored. A literature search, conducted in June 2023 on Google Scholar 1 and on Web of Science 2 for the terms “Five Ways / Five Steps to Wellbeing zoo,” “Five Ways / Five Steps to Wellbeing aquarium,” “Five Ways / Five Steps to Wellbeing nature” revealed no articles to have employed this method to date in the context of zoo operations and aims. Therefore, our concept paper reviews the operational nature of zoos and their aims, in terms of each of the Five Ways to illustrate the potential for this approach to future investigation and research application. We provide examples of how zoos can engage with each one of the Fives Ways to Wellbeing “actions” (Connect, Be active, Take notice, Keep learning, Give) to maximize their positive impacts on human wellbeing and planetary health both locally and globally. We have explored the framework of the Five Ways to Wellbeing to show how the activities that zoos provide and promote fit within the ideals and aims of the Five Ways to Wellbeing regarding improvements to human quality of life.

Zoos provide spaces that enable people to connect; both with each other and with the natural environment. A key element of the Five Ways to Wellbeing is the building and maintenance of positive relationships with others as a crucial element for long-term well-being. In the zoo, connecting with family, friends, colleagues, and the wider community is possible and can provide feelings of belonging, support, and purpose. Zoo visits foster a sense of interest in nature, facilitate social support, and spark positive discussion on the animals that visitors interact with Clayton et al. (2009) and Clayton et al. (2014) . As being connected fosters an individual’s sense of value and enhances social interactions ( Martino et al., 2017 ), positive impacts on mental health and physical health become realized. Across the world, there are estimates that over 700 million people may visit a zoo annually ( Gusset and Dick, 2011 ). By connecting individuals together as well as connecting people with nature, zoos can positively impact human health, and spread positive human Behavior change messages more widely that can ultimately benefit planetary health too ( Falk et al., 2007 ; Jensen et al., 2017 ; Godinez and Fernandez, 2019 ).

Use of various social media platforms and engagement with online audiences can foster interest and attention in a specific theme or idea ( Derby, 2013 ). The use of multiple social media platforms is beneficial for zoos to connect with wider audiences, especially with people who may not consider visiting a zoo or who may not have an immediate, deeper interest in animals and the natural world. Using social media platforms as a bridge between any potential interest in animals (at the zoo) and then going to visit such animals can encourage nature connectivity during a physical visit to the zoo itself. In this scenario, engagement with a social media platform sparks the interest that results in a visit to see animals at the zoo. For example, by presenting information on conservation and biodiversity in a factually correct yet accessible and entertaining manner, e.g., on YouTube ( Llewellyn and Rose, 2021 ) or on Facebook ( Rose et al., 2018 ) zoos can build links to under-represented groups that may not have originally considered visiting an animal collection or natural space.

Zoos should also broaden their audiences to reduce any perception that they are just places for families and children to have a fun day out in Esson and Moss (2014) and Turley (2001) . As an emphasis on being a playground for children can deter others from visiting zoos ( Turley, 2001 ), wider consideration of how to connect with a more diverse array of audiences would provide more personal value to a zoo visit and give wider impact of any mental and physical health benefits. As zoo visits provide people with opportunities to develop emotional connections with non-human animals ( Clayton et al., 2009 ; Howell et al., 2019 ), there is the chance to encourage pro-conservation and sustainability Behavior change post-zoo visit. By seeing animals in close proximity, zoos help foster a bond between the visitor and the natural wonder ( Vining, 2003 ) and this emotional connection may help foster compassion for and interest in wildlife, biodiversity and the health of the planet. As many people visit zoos as a group (e.g., in a family setting), such a connection to nature can spread across generations and be a talking point or topic of discussion and dialog between these individuals in their social group ( Figure 2 ).

Ultimate benefits of being connected at the zoo and on a zoo visit.

In the UK, zoos employ approximately 3,000 full-time staff ( Animal Careers Direct, 2023 ) and in the United States, AZA accredited zoos employ 198,000 people ( Marcy, 2021 ). Not only does this represent vast opportunity for connection, both AZA and BIAZA (and many zoo member and accreditation organizations globally) host annual conferences and have active working groups offering further, wider connectivity to like-minded people who share an interest in animals. The sharing of joint goals like achieving husbandry development and striving for improved animal welfare, therefore affords a sense of camaraderie and togetherness. Those staff who work directly with animals can also participate in stable, strong attachments with the animals in their care. With companion animals, such attachments are considered a positive human-animal interaction that is important for both good animal welfare and positive human wellbeing ( Walsh, 2009 ). Melfi et al. (2022) found that zookeepers did form such attachments to animal in their care, although not as strongly as with their own companion (pet) animals. This research identified that female zookeepers were significantly more attached to zoo animals than male zookeepers and thus there is the potential for all zookeepers but especially females to connect with the animals in their care. Even those whose work does not directly involve animals have daily opportunities to interact with animals as they journey around the zoo throughout the working day. Thus, zoo staff have many opportunities for connectivity with human and non-human animals alike.

Zoos need to consider animal welfare states and how these are upheld and promoted to visitors ( Sayers, 2020 ), especially when connecting visitors with nature. Promoting good animal welfare is likely to leave a lasting positive impression on zoo visitors as research has identified that when zoo visitors view abnormal Behaviors (e.g., stereotypic pacing), they leave with a poorer impression of the zoo overall ( Miller, 2012 ). Negative impressions of captive wildlife can be caused by a visitor’s experiences of poor animal management ( Woods, 2002 ), thus detracting from the zoo’s value and its ability to connect more deeply with the audiences that visit. Likewise, the behavior of visitors themselves can disturb the animals themselves and create a negative atmosphere at the zoo ( Collins et al., 2023 ), preventing others’ attempts at connecting with nature more widely, or animals specifically, in the zoo. Consequently, zoos need to actively manage visitor Behavior, engaging with them to eliminate negative actions that compromise animal welfare and the experiences of other visitors who wish to fully connect with nature during their time in the zoo’s living collection.

3. Be active

Any visit to a zoo or aquarium involves activity. Engaging in regular physical activity is beneficial for physical health and improves mental well-being ( Warburton et al., 2006 ). And physical activity that is outdoors and embedded in nature alleviates stress and boosts quality of life during challenging periods of living ( Egerer et al., 2022 ). Zoos can capitalize on such physical activity by outreach events and programs that can provide multiple opportunities for physical exercise, the broadening of social connections and chance to do or learn new things. Opportunities for engagement that encourage activity can include physical exercise, such as walking around exhibits and between enclosures, to engagement with educational activities that may involve creating, making, doing, or crafting ( Figure 3 ). Walking tours and guided experiences also increase opportunities for physical activity around the zoo. These events are documented as being particularly effective at enhancing connectivity with nature from student groups ( Kleespies et al., 2020 ) to middle-aged adults ( Kleespies et al., 2022 ) and provide a way of promoting the intrinsic value of nature to urbanized audiences that may appear removed from biodiversity ( de Lima, 2016 ). When an audience starts a tour with low nature connectivity, the event appears to be most effective at improving and increasing the individual’s sense of value of nature ( Kleespies et al., 2020 ). Given the staple of guided tours around zoos, this form of physical activity, coupled with the potential for large influences in positive connections to nature, would be something for zoos to capitalize on and promote more widely.

Being active at the zoo to improve physical health and how to connect with nature.

Participation in guided tours with other visitors could develop new social bonds and a sense of connection with other likeminded individuals that have similar interests and passions. These events involve activity (walking around the zoo itself) but also could encourage activity away from the zoo, and opportunities to explore other green or blue spaces that the visitor learns about during the visit. For example, zoos may manage a nature reserve at a separate location; if these nature reserves are highlighted to participants on a tour, a new venue for physical activity is made available for people to potentially engage with. Guided tours increase participants knowledge and education on a specific topic ( Whitehouse-Tedd et al., 2022 ) and as such, could be used to present other opportunities for activity that leads to increased connection with nature both at and away from the zoo. Such guided tours may be particularly important for people who visit a zoo alone to give a chance to strike up conversation with others around them and to therefore broaden their own social environment. Zoos provide multiple topics of conservation and moving between enclosures provides a variety of sensory experiences that can be discussed, explained, and explored. Opportunities for this activity could themed for a specific audience to encourage uptake on a tailored activity with key aims for that demographic.

Involvement in “keeper for a day” schemes or other opportunities to work with animals, such as volunteer programs, are also beneficial for improving visitors expectations and engagement with nature ( Meadows, 2011 ; Ferguson and Litchfield, 2018 ). Such experiences add more opportunities to complete physical activity, to bond with others and to experience nature close-up. Whilst caring for zoo animals is physically demanding work, zoos should consider developing volunteer programs that are accessible (where logistically possible) to all sections of society and particularly consider outreach to less mobile individuals that would still benefit from close encounters with nature. Examples of widening participation in such experiences are found within the industry ( Sydney Zoo, 2021 ; Blackpool Zoo, 2023 ) and this highlights the evolution of how zoos are encouraging the widest spectrum of society to come and engage with their messaging, key objectives, and with their living collections. As direct encounters with the animals themselves also involve physical activity, so this helps foster a connection with particular species in the zoo, and with nature more broadly.

Of course, zoos employ real keepers and a host of other staff who engage in physically demanding work as they clean animal enclosures, prepare animal diets, build or repair infrastructure and generally walk the many paths at the zoo as they visit different areas of the zoo as part of their work. Here another opportunity presents for zoos to evidence humans being active and fulfilling the second of the Five Ways for Wellbeing. In the sparse research into zookeeper opinions of their role and work environment, keepers acknowledge the ‘hard work’ their job entails; they describe ‘a calling’ and a need to work with animals, the importance and meaning of their role, but verbalize the sacrifice such physically and emotionally demanding work requires in terms of financial limitations, vigilance and the burdens of responsibility ( Bunderson and Thompson, 2009 ). Thus, a need to further explore zookeeper wellbeing transpires as these are active people, engaging enthusiastically with the sensory riches that their site of employment affords yet such wellbeing benefits are potentially at risk from the burdens of responsibility zookeepers report experiencing.

4. Take notice

Watching and experiencing the presence of zoo animals can encourage visitors to take notice of important messages ( Grajal et al., 2017 ; Moss and Pavitt, 2019 ) that could enable personal growth and development. For example, by learning about previously unknown facts, concepts, and theories, or by developing pro-conservation Behavior and engaging with tools to become more sustainable. An integrated approach of signage and other forms of communication and interpretation (such as interactive engagement with social media platforms) has been shown as particularly effective at crystallizing key biodiversity messages to zoo visitors ( Pearson et al., 2014 ). Zoos are places where people come to have encounters with other species ( Rice et al., 2021a ) and by seeking out such close encounters, visitors are taking more notice of the natural world and are being more connected to aspects of nature. By encouraging visitors to take notice, of the animals in the zoo and in a wider context, and of the visitor’s own learning and development, zoos can help people to reconnect with the wider world around them ( Figure 4 ).

Taking notice at the zoo to learn about nature in new ways and feel more connected to the natural world.

There is multiple evidence of how zoos contribute more widely to scientific outputs that can benefit wider society. Publication and dissemination of empirical science in the popular press and across media channels make scientific outputs more relevant and relatable to general, non-technical audiences ( Farinella, 2018 ). Across zoo membership and accreditation organizations, zoo and aquarium research is answering new questions and providing insightful and impactful information on a wide range of subjects ( Loh et al., 2018 ; Hosey et al., 2019 ; Hvilsom et al., 2020 ). Scientific outputs from zoos improve our theoretical and applied knowledge of the natural world ( Conde et al., 2019 ; Rose et al., 2019 ) and such information can be presented in an accessible and engaging way to visitors to encourage uptake and memory of important messaging (e.g., around a species’ ecology or conservation or adaptations).

Zoos also engage in sensory experiences with their visitors that encourage people to take notice of their environment in different or extraordinary ways. For example, sound walks where visitors are encouraged to experience the zoo by listening to their environment and not through sight ( Rice et al., 2021b ). Sound walks are unlikely to be fully accessible to visitors with hearing impairments, but these activities can open up the zoo’s environment in new ways for people with other sensory disabilities, e.g., those that are visually impaired. By encouraging visitors to engage with different senses, a new perspective on the zoo, its animals and what it means to be in nature can develop.

Zoos can also offer mindfulness programs and activities centered around this mental health paradigm. Mindfulness refers to “a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens” ( University of California Berkeley, 2023 ). And anyone practicing mindfulness is required to accept, and not judge, their current thoughts and feelings; to accept who they are in that current space and time. Mindfulness concepts can be built into wildlife encounters and experiences to promote a deeper connection with the natural environment and to enhance learning and engagement ( Woods and Moscardo, 2003 ). The sound walks, as mentioned above, can encourage “acoustic mindfulness” and reflection on the lives of the non-human animals at the zoo ( Rice et al., 2021b ), therefore deepening participant’s connection with nature on a different sensory level. Visitors on mindfulness walks at the zoo can be encouraged to pay close attention to their surroundings, and notice the colors, shapes, sizes and activity patterns of the animals, and how the animal fits into its environment. Some zoos provide a guide and instructions on how to practice mindfulness on a zoo visit ( Meek, 2016 ; Chester Zoo, 2023 ) including ideas for things to do (what to watch and experience), what to not do (e.g., avoid needing to photograph everything that can be seen or viewing the world via a mobile phone screen), and how to engage multiple senses.

Mindfulness is not simply a statement or singular reflection in time and space, it is a practice that is developed and fine-tuned with repetition and application; there is a level of dedication involved in focusing your thoughts on to your current state of being. Mindfulness refers to “observation without criticism” ( Williams and Penman, 2011 ) allowing negative thoughts to be noticed before they have chance to fully infiltrate a person’s psychology. Therefore, zoos should work to embed mindfulness practice into a visit, offering opportunities for focused thought and the quiet reflective spaces needed to achieve a truly mindful state. Other forms of mindfulness out in nature, such as “forest therapy” result in numerous physical and psychological benefits to participants ( Han et al., 2016 ; Rosa et al., 2021 ). Zoos should capitalize on such research to build and promote their own mindfulness programs, especially as many zoos are wooded and could participate in similar forest therapy style events. If zoos can provide such opportunities, both visitors and staff may reap the benefits, including reduced anxiety and depression ( Khoury et al., 2015 ), lower pain scores ( Reiner et al., 2013 ), and improved immunity ( Davidson et al., 2003 ). For visitors, this increases the likelihood of returning to the zoo and valuing the zoo’s work. In turn, this creates longevity in the zoo’s appeal and its influence. For zookeepers, mindfulness events afford opportunities to deal with the burdens of responsibility that zookeeping entails. Zookeepers need time to reflect and focus their thoughts, allowing them to preserve their own wellbeing and better notice when the wellbeing of animals in their care changes and intervention is required. As such, as human wellbeing improved, so does animal wellbeing also improve.

5. Keep learning

An integral aim of the modern zoo is education ( Kleiman, 1985 ), which adds value to the zoo’s living collection, its operations and impacts on society more widely ( Greenwell et al., 2023 ). Zoos have well planned and structured educational offerings for pre-school, school, college, and university-level groups, and provide a wealth of informal educational materials and activities for general visitors too. The importance of zoo education programs is well reviewed and often evaluated to ensure efficacy ( WAZA, 2023 ; EAZA, 2023b ). Formal education sessions and informal educational activities can develop the participants’ connection with nature ( Packer and Ballantyne, 2010 ; Kleespies et al., 2020 , 2022 ). Zoo visitors are receptive to information on wider global issues, e.g., implications of climate change ( Taylor and Duram, 2021 ), and as zoos can promote lifelong learning ( Luebke et al., 2012 ), visits to the zoo can improve awareness and understanding of such global issues to promote positive Behavior change that benefits the quality of life of multiple individuals. As visitor attitudes and perceptions are influenced by the visual messages that they receive as they move through the zoo ( Reade and Waran, 1996 ), zoos should consider the visitor’s journey through the zoo and how opportunities for learning are presented and made available at different enclosures and exhibits. Learning stations and interpretation also needs to consider the demographic at the zoo and perhaps ensure that adult visitors are catered for, as well as children.

Further development of how zoos use social media to provide information to their visitors should be undertaken to maximize integration of real world and online experiences. For example, research on use of social (e.g., a social media platform) and mobile (e.g., personal mobile phones) technologies as part of a museum visit revealed wider engagement of participants, provoked multiple opportunities for social exchange and did not interfere with real time engagement with the physical artifacts on display ( Charitonos et al., 2012 ). These authors also note the importance of integrating social and mobile technologies into educational visits to encourage engagement with overlooked or disadvantaged groups of people.

Many zoos offer educational talks or presentations by zoo staff. Attending these sessions can provide valuable insights into animal Behavior, conservation actions, and the importance of biodiversity to human and planetary health ( Figure 5 ). Live animal shows can be successful in connecting visitors to nature if they display the animal’s adaptations and natural Behavioral traits ( Povey and Rios, 2002 ; Spooner et al., 2021 ), therefore informal education that connects the audience to the animal and its environment is achieved through the display of the animal’s evolutionary characteristics. Linking evolution to ecology, and then to threats and challenges that populations face (e.g., habitat loss and population reductions due to human activities) may allow an audience to see just why animals are threatened, because they possess specific traits and adaptations for specific environments that humans are destroying. Such sessions can grow each individual’s knowledge of conservation issues ( Spooner et al., 2021 ) and, if such information is included in the demonstration, could become tangible tools that encourage audiences to be more sustainable and planetary friendly in daily life ( Mellish et al., 2017 ).

Opportunities to keep learning by visiting a zoo, interacting with signage and with animal displays or encounters, and taking away key information to promote positive human Behavior change.

Such sessions may also provide opportunities for social connections with others, and the chance to build links at the zoo that may result in longer term volunteering roles or similar. Using virtual reality (VR) to augment keeper presentations and educational sessions can bring the otherwise unseen day-to-day care of the zoo’s animals to the visitor’s attention ( Carter et al., 2020 ). Employing novel technologies, such as VR, alongside of social media platforms or app-based methods could inspire deeper and more impactful learning at the zoo to a wider demographic. Visitors respond positively to the presence of VR alongside of also experiencing the live animal in the same space ( Carter et al., 2020 ). Such integrated approaches, of presenting the animal in an enclosure, and of using other forms of technology to reduce distance between the animal and the visitor, could be employed (and evaluated) to see how well connection to nature is advanced, if information presented about the animal is retained for longer, and if visitors feel a deeper bond with the animal they are viewing.

When zoo staff prepare such formal and informal, active and passive learning opportunities, so to are they also experiences their own learning opportunities. Welfare, Behavior, conservation, research and animal care staff at the zoo must embed the latest scientific literature into practice, and therefore must engage with continuous professional development opportunities to ensure they can follow an evidence-based approach. Building mutually respectful and trusting collaborations with academic departments can enable access to scientific research papers and further opportunities for professional development ( Fernandez and Timberlake, 2008 ; Schulz et al., 2022 ). Regional zoo associations also run CPD training events from across a broad spectrum of topics from general zoo governance to species-specific husbandry ( ABWAK, 2023 ; BIAZA, 2023b ). Zoo staff report valuing such learning opportunities but do not always feel supported to seek out or attend conferences and events ( Bacon et al., 2021 ). Supporting zoo staff to attend such events is therefore essential because it allows learning to occur and further enhances staff social and professional connections across and within organizations. It also adds value to the diverse job roles at the zoo and allows staff opportunities for positive reflection on their own self-development.

Being at the zoo also encourages people to give back to try and help the natural world in some capacity. Giving does not mean material items or financial donations, although (where this is financially able and fiscally responsible) donating money to a charity does improve mood ( Geng et al., 2021 ). Those working at the zoo already give back, sometimes with limited financial reward or opportunity for career progression, as zookeepers report self-sacrifice while seeing they have a moral obligation to provide good welfare opportunities for the animals in their care ( Bunderson and Thompson, 2009 ). The public too have opportunities to give. Volunteering time is a form of giving that zoos readily facilitate ( BIAZA, 2023c ). Research suggests that acts of giving help improve mental wellbeing by creating positive feelings and a sense of reward, promoting feelings of purpose and self-worth, and helping to establish connections with others in the community ( Lum and Lightfoot, 2005 ; Rochester, 2006 ; Vannier et al., 2021 ). Although not all research agrees with ideas that volunteering always brings wellbeing benefits ( Whillans et al., 2016 ), study of zoo volunteers shows a profoundly positive response to the work that they conduct ( Fraser et al., 2009 ). Volunteers that are trained, and therefore feel invested in, can report the largest positive outputs from their work ( Smith et al., 2018 ). Therefore, to ensure positive mental health outcomes, volunteer programs should align (as best possible) with the volunteer’s expectations, wants and needs from the work and any pre-existing skills and expertise. As well managed volunteer programs, that value and invest in their volunteers, can increase uptake of pro-environmental and pro-conservation Behaviors ( Bixler et al., 2014 ), zoos can improve connection to nature and provide fulfilling and meaningful community engagement opportunities via their application of volunteers. Although the zoo and its operations will benefit from the presence of volunteers, it is essential that zoos see volunteers as more than this ( Smith et al., 2018 ), and actively provide programs for development and learning alongside of the duties required of the voluntary position.

Volunteering increases human and social capital ( Forbes and Zampelli, 2014 ). Human capital can be defined as the “knowledge, skills, and health that people invest in and accumulate throughout their lives” ( The World Bank, 2022 ), and the extent of this capital helps realize an individual’s potential productivity to society. Social capital is harder to define but considers the social relations that individuals can form that have productive benefits ( Institute for Social Capital, 2023 ), for example opportunities to form, develop and invest in professional and personal relationships that have meaning to the individuals involved. Zoos should consider human and social capital in terms of benefits to the volunteer and to the organization, and to nature conservation and planetary health more widely, when designing and implementing volunteer schemes. The volunteer giving time to the zoo, and the zoo giving resources and opportunities to the volunteer strengthens the overall impact of this relationship on the zoo’s education, engagement and conservation aims, and can boost the positive quality of life outcomes experienced by the individual who is volunteering ( Figure 6 ). This of course is also the case for those employed at the zoo and who go above and beyond to uphold and evidence industry values, the zoo’s mission statement and public expectation relating to animal care. Further research into the personal goals and aspirations of volunteers, their motivations behind taking on the role, what they have gained from it and why they feel this is important should be conducted more widely. Such research would provide evidence for how to develop volunteers, maintain their interest and enthusiasm, and ensure they feel valued and appreciated.

Providing opportunities for people to give back at the zoo can increase social capital (i.e., investment in friendships and in the activities of the organization) and increase human capital (i.e., personal knowledge and skills).

7. Discussion

In this article we have shown that working at or visiting a zoo enables connection with biodiversity and positive feelings of wellbeing. We suggest that zoos can consider a Five Ways to Wellbeing approach when discussing and implementing their living collection plans, designing and crafting visions, mission statements and operational strategies, and embedding opportunities for formal and informal learning for all visitors, staff and volunteers. Each of the Five Ways to Wellbeing are not mutually exclusive. Engagement with one leads to involvement in activities that fulfill many of the others. The multi-dimensional nature of a zoo visit (from seeing the animals, to engaging with people, to exploring a new environment, to the travel to and around the facility, to learning new information and developing ways of using such information) provides a unique way for visitors to become immersed in an environment that can positively impact on physical and mental health. Zoos need to ensure that the environment presented to visitors is a positive one. Animals need to be healthy, behaving in a species-typical, ecologically relevant manner, and all signage, interpretation and messaging needs to be clear and transparent. Zoos educational and conservation messages can be diluted if animals are behaving abnormally and if visitors leave with a poor view of how seriously the zoo views animal welfare. Therefore, developing the zoo as tool to improve mental health and human wellbeing goes hand-in-hand with developments to animal husbandry and management. The zoo must keep abreast of scientific evidence for best practice husbandry ( Rose, 2018 ) and continue to enhance and evolve enclosures and exhibit design so that animal welfare is also good and all living beings maintained in the zoo’s collection have an opportunity to experience “a good life” ( Green and Mellor, 2011 ).

Monitoring of physical and psychological outputs during a zoo visit show that the activity of walking around a zoo reduces blood pressure, increases step rates and improve positive outlooks on life ( Sakagami and Ohta, 2010 ). Encouraging activity by taking visitors on a journey around different enclosures and exhibits therefore has multiple health and wellbeing benefits, as well as encouraging people to feel more relaxed and, therefore, potentially keener to be in the moment and connect to nature. The New Economics Forum has evidenced that those who have strong social relationships, are physically active and continue to be involved in learning experience improvements to wellbeing and physical health ( Aked et al., 2008a ), as social bonds, an active lifestyle and opportunities for learning are all important influencers of health and wellbeing. If zoos are able to identify wellbeing needs in their local communities and target reduced price visitation accordingly, the Five Ways to Wellbeing could be more readily realized for more people who are disconnected from nature. Using the zoo as a way to exercise, whilst learning for example, may open up further possibilities to engage with different demographics.

Being active in the zoo can help people to “move their mood” ( Tonkin and Whitaker, 2021 ) and spending time on leisure activities at the zoo (with family and friends) can instigate conservations, discussions and dialog to help people feel more connected. Research has identified that spending time in immersive zoological exhibits improve the mood of visitors (with self-reported feelings of happiness increasing) and reduces stress ( Coolman et al., 2020 ). Zoos should build on these positive findings by providing maps, trials or tools that relate to the Five Ways to Wellbeing to easily share this concept with zoo visitors. Not all mental health challenges are discussed or visible, and a lowkey approach to improving mood and emotion may help individuals, when they leave the zoo, make changes to their daily lives that will improve their quality of life and reduce anxiety.

For those immersed in these environments as their place of work, there are connection benefits too, particularly for animal care staff. Their roles require undertaking physically demanding work yet their willingness to “give back” beyond their job description resonates as they see the value in their efforts to animal welfare and conservation outcomes. Compassion fatigue is a genuine risk to animal care staff ( Figley and Roop, 2006 ) as the toll of seeing animals failing to thrive can manifest into acquiescence. The relevance of good animal welfare here is paramount – seeing animals thrive brings a sense of proud fulfillment and pride in one’s job. This enhances happiness and creates opportunities to connect with other staff to share successes and good practice, and consequential scope for mindful happiness. Zoos should value their staff and sufficiently support their needs, both personal and professional, while prioritizing animal welfare to evidence the Five Ways to Wellbeing in their extensive workforce.

Key challenges that zoos face to provide a more egalitarian “Five Ways to Wellbeing” experience centre around entry costs and accessibility. Collaboration between institutions when concerning supplies, logistics and procurement, could reduce operating costs ( Baptista et al., 2021 ) and therefore zoos may be able to make reductions to ticket prices for low income groups or for sections of society that may have less disposable income to expend on entry tickets. Corporate sponsorship of reduced ticket entry could widen access to the zoo, and zoos should continue to build relationships with industry partners that could help subsidize ticket costs for key demographics that zoos wish to engage with. Zoos should consider the impact of ticket pricing as a potential barrier to engagement with their work, and engage with external social initiatives, widening participation schemes and philanthropy within their local community to attract audiences that may be unable or unwilling to visit. For example, the “Generation Wild” initiative at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) aims to break down barriers to access to nature, and provides free site entry plus follow-up learning opportunities to build pro-nature, pro-conservation attitudes and Behavior change in adults and children alike ( WWT, 2023 ). Increasing the use of different tools for communication could provide zoos with a way of reaching a wider societal demographic with associated wider societal impacts. Multiple layers of interpretation have been shown as the most effective way of instilling memorable and relatable messaging when experiencing a zoo exhibit ( Weiler and Smith, 2009 ). Therefore, combining different media and formats of messaging could help zoos extend the reach of their key educational outputs and encourage more people to feel connected to nature, as well as encouraging the Keep Learning aspect of the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Zoos also need to consider how disconnected visitors, volunteers and staff may initially be from nature. Oh et al. (2021) demonstrate that spending a longer in nature than usual can be more stressful or anxiety-inducing if the person’s baseline connectivity to nature was weak to begin with. Therefore, zoos need to be mindful of the background of individuals who they attempt to engage with, their prior experiences of the natural world and how they perceive any relationship with nature, before embarking on nature connectivity programs or events. In this article, we have provided an overview of the activities of the modern zoo that support these Five Ways to Wellbeing, in the hope that others will take these concepts, apply and test them to encourage new and effective ways of human engagement with the zoo’s mission and objectives.

Nature-based interventions within the zoo can be of benefit for specific groups of people. For example, individuals with disabilities are less likely to spend time in nature than able-bodied people ( Sahlin et al., 2019 ). Providing nature based interventions for disabled people and their carers has positive educational outputs and improved caretakers enthusiasm for their profession by facilitating new ways of managing stress and providing tools to improve mood ( Sahlin et al., 2019 ). Zoos should work on their outreach programs with under-represented groups, and those with limited access to nature, to ensure the zoo’s green and blue spaces, and the animal collection, are accessible to all those who may benefit from being immersed in a natural setting. Investing in such initiatives and objectives today means ensuring visitor footfall and recruitment of a sustainable workforce in the future.

Zoos should continue to research the potential of their living collections as being beneficial to nature connectivity and as a tool to improve emotions and mood. Research identifies that whilst there can be common, positive findings on how observing and interacting with animals improves human wellbeing ( Sahrmann et al., 2016 ; Gee et al., 2019 ), methodological limitations, biases in experimental design and lack of repeatability can reduce generalisability of research findings ( Clements et al., 2019 ). Cross institutional research, using standardized methods and pre-registering projects to encourage scrutiny prior to data collection may help to generate more robust conclusions that can help decipher exactly why being in nature, or being near animals, is beneficial to human wellbeing.

Zoos can increase connection to nature by considering the situation that experiences take place in. Research on situational interest, i.e., the specific features of a place, location or artifact ( Schiefele, 2009 ), can provide zoos with information on how to present learning opportunities to increase connection with nature. A zoo’s landscape ecology, it’s “zooscape” ( Bisgrove, 2022 ), can promote connection to nature whilst explain the ecological and social importance of habitats and green/blue spaces. Bonderup Dohn (2011) found that school children who were presented with learning activities within an aquarium responded positively to the experience because of the setting. This research identified that the children’s social involvement, the hands-on element of the activity, the activity being a surprise and novel, and the aspect of knowledge acquisition as the main outcome, to be key triggers of interest. These findings are useful for zoos to consider when planning and designing both formal and informal education sessions and when they wish to foster the interest of their visitors in important, fundamental topics (e.g., biodiversity conservation).

Whilst zoos are working hard to expand their wider influences and extend their role in society, there are still areas of publication output and scientific enquiry that can be worked on Rose et al. (2019) . For example, Anzai et al. (2022) shows that not all zoos can have a focus on scientific research and not all research enquiry focuses on the key aims of the modern zoo. Therefore, zoos should continue to increase collaboration and the development of relationships across their own industry and externally too (e.g., with academic departments at universities) to enable all important aspects of their operations to be evidence based. Ultimately, zoos and aquariums need to place a greater emphasis on animal welfare and on human wellbeing as part of their core aims, operational outputs and influence over human populations (their visitors, staff and stakeholders). As examined by Rose and Riley (2022) , cementing Wellbeing as a key aim of the modern zoo provides clear evidence to all invested parties that zoos fundamentally care about animal welfare and human wellbeing because they are working to promote, protect and preserve positive aspects of mental health.

Research has identified that people who care about threats to the natural world are more likely to spend time at the zoo and view the zoo’s work as positive for nature conservation and as a way of encouraging planetary friendly Behavior change ( Taylor and Duram, 2021 ). However, there are many people who may not consider visiting the zoo (as a way of interacting with green and blue spaces) and so zoos should focus some of their efforts and resources on reaching groups of people that are less regular visitors or who never visit. For some, zoos can be controversial institutions whose aims appear contradictory ( Wickins-Dražilová, 2006 ; Carr and Cohen, 2011 ; Maynard, 2018 ). Therefore, the idea of connecting with the natural world in the unnatural setting of zoo’s enclosures and exhibits may appear incompatible. Zoos should therefore promote and explain examples of Behavioral consistency between wild individual and those under human care. For example, parity of vigilance activity in meerkats that, even after many generations in captivity, still perform key wild-type Behaviors ( Huels and Stoeger, 2022 ). This would demonstrate the care that zoos place in their husbandry and management to ensure that species in the living collections remain a true representation of nature. Zoos should also consider the language they use and how they promote themselves. For example, using the term “habitat” for an animal’s enclosure ( Bruno et al., 2023 ) could be seen as disingenuous; a habitat is a biological system, where a species interacts with a myriad of biotic and abiotic interactions ( European Environment Agency, 2023 ). A zoo’s managed environment controls these interactions, and therefore explaining to visitors how specific aspects and resources of a habitat are replicated within an enclosure may be a more honest way of educating visitors on species’ ecology. There is clearly a role for zoos in the protection, promotion and conservation of species that is promoted via public education ( Whitehead, 1995 ; McCubbin, 2022 ). Getting the messaging right, being honest and transparent, and accessible, to encourage wider buy-in of such roles will enhance the relevance of the zoo to a wider demographic.

This article has explored the concept of the Five Ways to Wellbeing regarding the activities and operations of zoos that could be directly co-opted to promote human wellbeing and connection to nature. We have reviewed the scientific literature and practical examples of zoos’ works to demonstrate how the aims and goals of such activities can improve human health and wellbeing, promote access to green/blue spaces and support more opportunities for nature connectivity. Due to the nature of a review paper, we are unable to evaluate or analyze the timescale, logistical considerations, financial requirements, or personnel needs of successfully embedding the Five Ways to Wellbeing into the work of the modern zoo. Empirical information is required to understand how well our suggested Five Ways to Wellbeing concepts and approaches would fare in practice. Further research into the design of a Five Ways to Wellbeing initiative or activity, followed by its implementation, and eventual evaluation and assessment of measurable impact is required to fully evidence the relevance of this approach to the positive outcomes of visiting a zoo and engaging with its living collection and green/blue spaces.

8. Conclusion

This article has reviewed how a Government-instigated initiative that aims to improve human mental health and quality of life could be useful for zoological collections to consider as a way of working to enhance the wellbeing of their communities and improve connection with nature. Our article shows how the key concepts of the Five Ways to Wellbeing can form a framework for zoos to further engage with their human audiences. Each of the Five Ways to Wellbeing is relevant to the work that zoological collections do for their staff, visitors, and the wider communities around them. We have shown that zoos contain many useful and relevant exhibits (e.g., animals within their enclosures), programs (e.g., educational activities and public talks), and resources (e.g., open green spaces, planting, biological artifacts) that together provide multiple opportunities to apply the ideas of Five Ways to Wellbeing. The zoo’s most important resources is its living collection of plants and animals; by tailoring the use of the living collection to improve engagement with the natural world and to better connect their workforce and visitors to nature, zoos are not only able to advance wellbeing of their human stakeholders but also add more value to that already intrinsic within the living collection itself.

Author contributions

PR: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. LR: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing.

Funding Statement

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

1 scholar.google.com

2 webofscience.com

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Things To Do | Virginia Zoo hosts ‘Teddy Bear Clinic’ for…

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Things to do | virginia zoo hosts ‘teddy bear clinic’ for furry friends.

Elaina is one of the many children who arrived at the Virginia Zoo on Saturday morning for the Teddy Bear Clinic, a series of check-up stations for stuffed animals. From height and weight to eyes and ears, health aspects for myriad fluffy animals were evaluated by real humans.

Doctors from the Naval hospital manned several stations for the stuffed animals: vitals; heart and lungs; eyes, ears and mouth; boo-boos and imaging; grooming; and medicine. At each table, children brought their stuffed animals for their yearly checkups, and were able to practice how visits to the physician work. Doctors showed each child how to use stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs and other medical tools.

“We’re doing this because we want children to be a little bit more comfortable when they go to the doctors,” said Nick Dzendzel, communications specialist for the zoo.

This is the second year of the Teddy Bear Clinic, Dzendzel said. He said last year, the clinic was smaller, but the staff expanded it for this year with help from Towne Bank. In addition to the clinic, guests watched Polly — a possum who lives at the zoo — receive a checkup from zoo staff, and the facility’s Animal Wellness Campus hosted chats about the health and nutrition for the zoo’s residents.

Even at the Teddy Bear Clinic, there was a waiting room. A fleet of strollers were parked outside, and patients and their child companions gathered at the zoo’s Event Pavilion. Staff signed them in with patient checklists before sending them to the clinic stations. Animals brought to the clinic were as diverse as the zoo’s residents: bears, bunnies, frogs and even a giraffe named Zebra waited their turn.

Elaina Varga, 7, measures her teddy bear during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Baker and Avery Smith wait with their stuffed animals, named Lolo Bear and Teddy, during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Andrew Friski from Naval Medical Center Portsmouth helps Ruthie Lane, 2, take the vitals on her teddy bear during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

James Nickleberry, 1, examines his teddy bear during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Adam Verhofstadt, 6, examines his Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animal during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Oliver Borza uses a toy stethoscope to examine his stuffed giraffe, named Zebra, during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Cayden Brown has his stuffed animal named Mewtwo examined during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Emmy Barclift watches on as Andrew Friski from Naval Medical Center Portsmouth examines her stuffed dog named Cedric during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Anna Lepore, an OBGYN at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, examines stuffed animals during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

Elaina Varga, 7, intently reads her teddy bear’s weight during the Teddy Bear Clinic event at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot)

“In the waiting room, we have our storybooks, and as they check in, they get a patient chart,” Dzendzel said. “As they’re waiting, they can build animal enrichment (chains of paper rings), so they’re actually building enrichment that we will use out there with our animals at some point. The more paper rings we have, the better, because almost every animal in the zoo can interact with them.”

As more children moved down the line, Emmy Barclift brought her pal — a brown and white dog named Cedric — to get his heart checked by Dr. Andrew Friski. After a few moments with the stethoscope, Cedric gets the go-ahead to move down the line.

Even if kids at the clinic forgot their animals at home, Virginia Zoo staff provided stuffed bears for those who wanted to participate.

“These are all the play items, and we wanted to make it as interactive as we could for the children,” Dzendzel said. “Even though our doctors are here facilitating stuffed animals, they’re talking about the human-care side of things and how this corresponds. The main idea is that doctors aren’t scary.”

Eliza Noe, [email protected]

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