Monitoring Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Review of Aspirations and Deployments in Zoos

Abstract

Focusing on zoo environments, we conducted a literature review investigating the use of non-invasive technologies designed for monitoring the behaviour and welfare of animals. The research question asks: What technologies or monitoring methods have been able to capture information on behaviours and needs of animals in zoo, sanctuary, domestic or agricultural environments? From the initial literature review, we determined progressive zoos, research labs, institutions and companies and identified monitoring technologies developed to improve animal welfare. We then emailed out a concise survey to those zoos to gauge what monitoring technologies they were using and asked them to identify where systems and their deployment could be improved. We highlight advances and developments identified in the literature, to underline current and future monitoring needs of zoo environments. We contribute to the research field by mapping these sought-after changes against the most relevant identified monitoring technologies distinguished in the literature search.