Play in Elephants: Wellbeing, Welfare or Distraction?
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Webber CE
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7071055 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Play in Elephants: Wellbeing, Welfare or Distraction?
Webber C Elizabeth CE Lee Phyllis C PC
Animals : an open access journal from MDPI 20200214 2
We explore elephant play behaviour since (a) play has been proposed to represent a potential welfare indicator; and (b) play has been associated with long-term survival in the wild. We categorised play into four types, and investigate both social (gentle, escalated-contact) and non-social (lone-locomotor, exploratory-object) play from observations made on wild (Asian N = 101; African N = 130) and captive (Asian N = 8; African N = 7) elephant calves ranging in age from birth to five years. Social ...[more]
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