The welfare problems of wide-ranging Carnivora reflect naturally itinerant lifestyles.

ABSTRACT: Carnivora with naturally small home ranges readily adjust to the evolutionarily new environment of captivity, but wider-ranging species seem prone to stress. Understanding why would advance both collection planning and enclosure design. We therefore investigated which aspects of wide-ranging lifestyles are key. We identified eight correlates of home range size (reflecting energetic needs, movement, intra-specific interactions, and itinerant lifestyles). We systematically assessed whether these correlates predict welfare better than range size per se, using data on captive juvenile mortality (from 13 518 individuals across 42 species) and stereotypic route-tracing (456 individuals, 27 species). Naturally itinerant lifestyles (quantified via ratios of daily to annual travel distances)

SUBMITTER: Bandeli M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10480699 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature