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Text|Broken Boat Han
Editor|Broken Boat Han
preface
The red panda is endemic to the eastern Himalayas, stretching from Nepal, India, Bhutan and China to Myanmar.
Living at an altitude of 1500-4000 meters, this creature habitually moves at night, its whereabouts are uncertain, and it is difficult to be detected on weekdays.
However, due to poaching and the destruction of bamboo forests, red pandas are now threatened in most of their range, and the wild population is declining, with fewer than 10,000 mature individuals left.
Worldwide efforts to protect the species include a global captive breeding program with the possibility of reintroduction, however due to low reproductive success and low infant survival.
This also leads to unstable captive populations, the cause of which is unknown, but may be related to stress and impaired health.
Globally, more than 300 red pandas are kept in 92 institutions and 36 in India, while one data shows that the reproductive success rate of red pandas varies widely among institutions, with environmental factors and general rearing practices putting pressure on captive animals.
Environmental factors of red panda environmental captivity
Environmental and biological factors can affect the stress response of many species, and in red pandas, high ambient temperatures, small shell size, improper shell substrate, lack of hiding places, nest boxes, and climbing structures will all play a role.
It is also necessary to determine whether contact with visitors can cause stress and reduce reproductive success in captivity, especially if the climate can put pressure on red pandas.
Because of the warm weather in places with large captive populations, young pandas eventually had a higher survival rate in offspring than older pandas, suggesting that parental age may also affect reproductive success.
Several studies have evaluated the reproductive hormones of red pandas in captivity, but little is known about stress and reproductive physiology of the species overall, particularly in terms of the influence of management factors.
Studies of some red pandas found that they have stereotypical behaviors such as pacing, flicking their tongue and circling postures, which indicate poor health.
After the study, it was also found that factors such as log density, number of nests, tree density, and tree height all affect the incidence of stereotypes.
In addition, because stress is known to negatively affect the reproduction of other species, the study evaluated how environmental and biological factors are associated with adrenal and gonadotropins in the same red panda population.
Experts hypothesize that: (i) changes in environmental and biological factors affect fecal glucocorticoid (fGCM), progesterone (fPM), and androgen (fAM) concentrations.
and (ii) fGCM concentrations are inversely correlated with fAM and fPM concentrations, as captivity is known to affect an individual's health status.
Therefore, understanding the factors associated with stress and reproduction, as well as the measurement of related hormones, is important to ensure successful captive breeding.
The overall goal is to provide empirical data that can be used to improve management strategies to effectively address the health needs of red pandas in captivity.
The red pandas in this study were kept in semi-natural open enclosures with large trees and nests and fed a complementary diet at night.
The diet consists of bamboo in the evening and complementary food in the morning, with temperatures varying between 4-22°C, and all three zoos are at similar heights.
The registrar in each zoo obtains a breeding record of each female, and the pandas are managed individually or in pairs during the breeding season (January to January), called "social".
Stool sample collection
In the past two weeks, fecal samples were collected among these red pandas, 18 samples per red panda, and whole fresh fecal samples were collected in the morning, with individual red pandas defecating in the same location in the enclosure.
This facilitates individual identification, and experienced zookeepers also help identify individual feces, drying samples in a 24°C hot blast furnace for 20 h immediately after collection.
The dried samples are packaged in sterile zip-lock bags and stored at room temperature in a humidity-controlled room, immediately after which the samples are transferred to a laboratory for processing and hormone analysis.
The overall results suggest that adopting a more frequent feeding schedule provides a larger enclosure with sufficient enrichment, allowing for more nests with sufficient space.
and the number of visitors to be controlled later, all of which may have an impact on the health of red pandas.
This limits the animal's movement due to the limited space within the enclosure, and these findings all highlight the importance of providing the animal with space and a rich balanced combination to effectively cope with stressors and help ensure the physical and mental health of the species in captivity.
In this study, pandas found to be together and together for a long time showed lower adrenal activity, but for a shorter duration, and further data are still being studied.
At the same time, experts also found that the psychological stress, or uniformity, of red pandas was negatively correlated with sociability, suggesting that socializing red pandas with their captive peers may reduce stress and abnormal behavior.
Similarly, physiological results suggest that prolonged socialization with red pandas contributes to good health.
In this study, the effect of high visitor numbers on physiological function means that visitors are one of the potential predictors of animal health during confinement.
Red pandas are nocturnal in nature, so constant exposure to large numbers of visitors during the day, up to 162 per hour, may have an impact on adrenal steroid production.
A similar relationship has been investigated in many other captive species, including the Mexican wolf, the Indian blackbuck, the royal Bengal tiger and the Indian leopard.
Feeding frequency is also one of the factors contributing to the hormonal downward trend, indicating the importance of an adequate but variable food supply for the health of red pandas in captivity.
A nutritionally balanced diet is essential for the survival of all living things, the most obvious of which is for captive animals.
Unlike wild animals, they are dependent on humans, so captive animals with adequate food supplies will have less nutritional stress.
Although the total amount of food fed was the same, a decrease in hormone concentrations was observed as the frequency of feeding increased, and the red panda processed bamboo had a relatively low digestive capacity and could only extract a quarter of its energy.
So frequent eating seems to be an important reference for reducing frustration and stress in captive red pandas, as reported by other species.
In the case of elephants in zoos, frequent feeding regimens are better for their health and reduce the homogeneity of Asian elephants in captivity.
In free-range African elephants, the relationship between rainfall and hormone concentrations was equal, and a study of chimpanzees showed that monthly fruit abundance was inversely correlated with urinary cortisol concentrations.
The experts' findings further reinforce earlier findings that a more stable food supply through frequent feeding can potentially support good health in captive animals.
The current study suggests that fence size and number of nests are positively correlated with hormone concentrations, which is unexpected but can be confounded by the lack of enrichment in these spaces.
The enclosure size for any species in the zoo environment should take into account the size of the home in the wild.
The size of the enclosure for red pandas is estimated to be around 9.6 kilometers, and it is important to keep the enclosure large enough for the animals to roam and engage in species-specific behavior.
However, not all studies reported an effect of enclosure size on the behaviour or cortisol/stress levels of captive animals.
Even in great apes, a study of caged long-tailed macaques found that pen size had minimal effect on urinary cortisol, and similarly, keeping rhesus monkeys in larger cages did not reduce stereotypical behavior.
One study also showed that transferring a young gorilla to larger, more natural enclosures actually led to an increase in some stressful behaviors.
Corticosteroid concentrations increase separately when individuals receive different blocking conditions, suggesting that enriched but small closures are not useful for controlling physiological stress.
Similarly, hiding places such as nests are important features of enclosures for captive animals to cope with stressors, which have also been preliminarily verified in a series of observational studies.
For example, kittens use hiding places to cope with elevated physiological stress, as well as stressful behaviors reported in other studies.
Therefore, providing space alone may not be enough to reduce or alter the adrenal steroid activity of red pandas, although red pandas in larger enclosures may be more active.
This may be related to increased adrenal activity, but based on daily behavioral observations, there is no evidence for this in this study.
It is more likely that the sparse enrichment feature in the small enclosure inhibits natural behavior during the day, which is particularly important.
The difference between free-range and captive red pandas
In free-range conditions, environmental or habitat conditions can alter physiological adaptations, while in captivity, pen characteristics and enrichment can play an important role in influencing physiology.
In the wild, the red panda is an arboreal species that uses trees and deadwood logs for daily activities such as feeding, resting, and moving.
This includes nesting for childbirth and raising offspring, so the presence of trees, deadwood logs, and nests may be important clues to normal physiological responses.
Red pandas use fallen logs and shrubs to elevate several of their activities in the wild, making them vital and abundant items in captivity.
These results all indicate that under captivity, fences containing a large number of trees promote better physiological functions of red pandas, so space or enclosures are abundant and an integral part of red panda health management.
When exposed to different enclosure types, fecal estrogen concentrations were higher in high-enrichment enclosures and lowest in small-enrichment enclosures.
This suggests the importance of providing adequate fenced areas and sufficient abundance to support the health and reproductive health of red pandas in captivity.
conclusion
The expert study measured fGCM, fPM, and fAM concentrations in red pandas in captivity and demonstrated the influence of environmental and biological factors on the concentration of red panda steroids in zoo settings.
The results do show that providing appropriate enrichment, such as nests and logs, increasing feeding times, providing adequate fenced areas, and controlling the number of visitors.
It can reduce stress and support better reproductive adaptability of the species, but the last item, controlling the number of visitors, will be the most difficult to achieve.
Therefore, providing structures and nest boxes to allow animals to hide under duress is a breeding behavior that zoos can control, and it is also where zoos should concentrate.
Continuous sampling is key to studying the hormonal cycle of animals, so long-term continuous sampling studies are needed to further confirm these preliminary results.
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