Beyond Mammals: Environment Enrichment for Amphibians and Reptiles

During the past decade, increased concern for the psychological as well as the physical well-being of animals has allowed environmental enrichment to mature as a focal concept in their captive management (Shepherdson 1989, 1991a,b, 1992). As the concept has developed, its scope has expanged to include almost any variable linked to the perceptual universe, or umwelt (von Ucxkiill I909), of the captive animal (Shepherdson 1992). Despite this rapid conceptual growth, environmental enrichment remains an approach applied largely to mammals (Warwick 1990a; Shepherdson 1992; King 1993); other groups, such as amphibians and reptiles, are rarely addressed. For example, a recent extensive catalogue of enrichment ideas (Copenhagen Zoo 1990) devoted only a single page to these taxa. In other reviews, amphibians and reptiles either are not mentioned (Dubois 1991; Griede 1992; Shepherdson 1991a; Tudge 1991) or appear only briefly in passing discussion (Markowitz 1982). Nascent efforts have been made to address the psychophysiological problems of reptiles in captivity (Bels 1989; Warwick 1990a,b; Burghardt and Layne 1995), but these are the salient exceptions.