University/Zoo Collaborations
For college students interested in studying animal behavior, zoos can be very attractive facilities. Although zoos cannot provide the same type of experience as a field school (where students study animals in their natural environment under the direction of instructors), they offer a cost-effective way to observe and study a wide variety of animals. In the Bay Area of Northern California, the large number of zoos and colleges in relatively close proximity means that when you visit Oakland Zoo or San Francisco Zoo, you are likely see groups of students completing class assignments or individual students conducting independent research. I, personally, have sent students to all of the zoos in the greater Bay Area for both types of projects. And these experiences are great: for the cost of zoo admission (and sometimes, not even that!), students get out of the classroom and gain hands-on experience with research.
But the link between universities and zoos can be even more meaningful. Instead of students simply going to a zoo to observe animal behavior for a class assignment or their own research project, what if they collected data that was useful to the zoo? What if faculty who had students interested in studying animal behavior got them involved in projects that enhance the lives of the animals? This is level of university-zoo collaboration provides students with a longer-term, engaging academic experience and their research helps zoos better understand and enhance the wellness of the animals in their care. Now that's a REAL win-win!
This is exactly the type of collaboration that's developed between my Sonoma State University Primate Ethology Research Lab and Oakland Zoo for our sun bear enrichment project, but it is not unique, and it has a name: applied ethology. Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and applied ethology is the scientific study of the behavior of animals that are under human management, including farm and zoo animals, with the intention of improving health and welfare.
How do these collaborations between universities and zoos start? In my case, they started because I was looking for a way to involve graduate and advanced undergraduate students in affordable and meaningful animal behavior research, and I thought, "What if I leveraged student interest in animal behavior and got them involved in research that zoos wanted and needed? What if student research projects could simultaneously enhance the student's academic experience and benefit zoos and their animals?" This is exactly what previous collaborations between my lab and Oakland Zoo have accomplished. In 2015, we successfully built smart feeders for the ring-tailed lemurs and studied their behavior. In 2017, we studied how chimpanzees interacted with multi-phase enrichment devices we built for them. My lab has also collaborated with the San Francisco Zoo and Safari West Wildlife Preserve to study a variety of animals, including mandrills, squirrel monkeys, lemurs, and African bongos. At the same time, these projects have provided dozens graduate and undergraduate students valuable, hands-on research experiences that have resulted in presentations at professional conferences for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the American Society of Primatologists, and the International Society for Zoo Animal Welfare and helped numerous students get into graduate school (e.g., at UC Davis, Central Washington University and Tulane University) or start careers (e.g., at San Diego Zoo Global, CA Fish and Wildlife, or teaching positions at community colleges). (For more information on the significance of these collaborations, please view the poster I presented at the 12th North American Regional Meeting of the International Society for Applied Ethology in May 2014.)
By joining our team as a backer, and helping to fund the building of our enrichment devices you've got a wonderful opportunity to help us continue this productive collaboration. Your contribution will help further enrich the lives of Oakland Zoo's sun bears and provide valuable research experience for our graduate student researcher, Yasmeen, and the undergraduate research assistants who join the project. You can learn more about Yasmeen in her Experiment.com profile.
On behalf of the sun bears and the students, thanks for your support!
Want to learn more about our project? Please go to: https://experiment.com/sunbears
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