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Controlled Deprivation and Enrichment

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Health and Welfare of Captive Reptiles

Abstract

Captivity places various constraints on the lives of reptiles, and despite the best efforts by caretakers, captive environments will never offer the same degree of complexity or range of choices available to free-living individuals in nature. Efforts to improve the lives of reptiles in human care may focus on increasing environmental complexity and the range of choices and opportunities available to them. Known collectively within the field of animal husbandry as enrichment, the origins and underpinnings of such efforts are deeply entrenched in the management of mammals. In reptiles, enrichment is a relatively new phenomenon, likely due to long-held erroneous presumptions that reptiles lack the cognitive or behavioural complexity to benefit from enrichment. This chapter reviews concepts of enrichment within the context of herpetological husbandry, presents a conceptual framework for developing reptile enrichment programs, and discusses ways in which captive environments can be enriched to improve the lives of these animals. Also addressed are some inherent challenges associated with the interpretation and provision of reptile enrichment that can affect its implementation and success. Through this discussion, we seek to stimulate new interest and more widespread usage of enrichment in the reptile-keeping community beyond zoological parks, where it is mostly limited to today.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Terry Maple, Zachary Loughman, Roman Muryn and Frances Baines for useful discussions on reptile enrichment and welfare, and Grant Kother for generously providing photographs. We would also like to thank Clifford Warwick, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Jill Gordon for providing useful literature, the herpetology departments of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens and Audubon Zoo, and the Saint Louis Zoo for their support. Lastly, we thank Clifford Warwick, Phillip Arena, Gordon Burghardt, and three anonymous reviewers who offered helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Herpetology, Audubon Zoo, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Robert W. Mendyk

  2. Philadelphia Zoo, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Lauren Augustine

  3. Department of Herpetology, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington, DC, USA

    Robert W. Mendyk & Lauren Augustine

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  1. Robert W. Mendyk
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Correspondence to Robert W. Mendyk .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Emergent Disease Foundation, London, UK

    Clifford Warwick

  2. College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education, Academic Operations, Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Murdoch University, Mandurah, WA, Australia

    Phillip C. Arena

  3. Departments of Psychology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Gordon M. Burghardt

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Mendyk, R.W., Augustine, L. (2023). Controlled Deprivation and Enrichment. In: Warwick, C., Arena, P.C., Burghardt, G.M. (eds) Health and Welfare of Captive Reptiles. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86012-7_10

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