Details are starting to emerge on how Ukraine’s zoos are coping with the war. Some of the animals including lions, tigers and wild cats have been rehomed to zoos in Poland but this is just not going to be possible for many species.

The current situation in Ukraine is having a drastic effect on the nation’s zoos, just as WWII did at London Zoo. Right now, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) and the World Association of Zoos and Aquaria (WAZA) are working to support the Ukrainian zoos as much as they can.

There are three large zoos, Nikolaev Zoo, Kyiv Zoological Park and Kharkiv Zoo, in cities currently under attack by the Russian military, which have talked about how they are currently coping.

Outsiders might think the best thing to do would be to evacuate the animals into a safer environment away from the war zone.

But this is an incredibly risky endeavour.

In a tense and difficult environment animals may be fearful of the sounds around them.

Loading highly stressed animals into crates and transporting them across noisy and complicated conflict zones could cause severe illness or death, quite apart from the danger of being hit by gunfire.

Noise affects animals:

Zoo animals are used to a degree of noise when visitors come to their enclosures.

Even human chatter has been shown to cause zoo animals to become stressed or change their behaviour. But mostly, the impact of visitors on zoo animals is negligible.

Research on the effect of explosions near zoo animals, as is happening near some Ukrainian zoos, is not something that has been studied but we do have some possible comparisons to construction work.

A study published in 2019 investigated how elephants, giraffes and emus coped with zoo construction work.

Elephants, giraffes and emus reacted with stress and agitation and moved to quieter areas of their enclosures.

Giraffes also moved closer to other animals in their herd, a behaviour seen in wild giraffes indicative of increased protection.

With the scale of war and associated explosions being much higher than construction work, we could assume that this will be having a terrifying impact on the animals housed at these zoos.

At Kyiv zoo some animals are being given sedatives or moved to underground spaces, and keepers are staying with them overnight.

Problems with moving homes:

On March 18 EAZA released a statement to say that: “Ukrainian zoos are generally still not asking for our assistance to relocate animals from high-risk zones; this may not correspond to information you are receiving in the general media coverage, but we support the direct request of the zoos not to relocate animals for the present.”

We also need to consider where would they go.

Neighbouring zoos may not have the space, staffing needs, expertise or specially designed enclosures to house these animals.

Even in normal circumstances, moving zoo animals is not an easy task, animal transportation can have negative effects on the animal’s welfare.

Animals undergoing transportation can experience dehydration, fatigue, behavioural changes and stress.

Research has also shown that animals form relationships with the keepers and so this might have additional welfare implications if animals are moved under stressful conditions to new locations.

Source | The Conversation