A public giraffe feeding programme can reach animals that never take food from a visitor's hand. In a shared exhibit at Seneca Park Zoo, zebra approached the feeding deck where dropped lettuce offered an extra opportunity. Their presence sometimes caused giraffes to move away.
Sarah E. Koopman, Lindsay Brinda and Louis DiVincenti included those zebra in a 2023 welfare study. Keeper observations did not record zebra stereotypies or reveal a clear increase in giraffe stereotypies across the programme. But the zebra's changing feeding and movement patterns showed why assessing only the advertised participants would leave part of the event unexplained.
The encounter extended beyond the deck
Three Masai giraffes and three plains zebra shared the exhibit. Giraffes could approach or leave the public feeding deck, and keepers could cancel or end sessions if they did not participate. Only a few visitor parties used the deck simultaneously, with overall numbers gradually increased as the season developed.
The programme consisted of two scheduled sessions on five days of the week, typically lasting fifteen to twenty minutes. It was therefore a particular form of controlled, time-limited feeding, not an all-day supply of visitor food.
The zebra retained access to the area. Dropped lettuce brought them close to giraffes, creating a plausible route for the programme to alter interactions between species. Partway through the study, a timed hay feeder was programmed to deliver zebra food elsewhere shortly before and during the giraffe sessions.
That management response is important evidence about the setting. The researchers were observing an evolving programme, including attempts to redirect the zebra. They were not comparing an unchanged exhibit randomly assigned to feeding and no feeding.
A few observations, repeated over many days
On-duty keepers collected the data during their normal work. At morning, midday and afternoon time windows, one keeper recorded what each animal was doing. The method required brief scans rather than someone continuously watching every animal for hours.
Each individual accumulated 170 observations: 64 before the public feeding season, 76 on feeding days and 30 on non-feeding days during the season. The pre-season period included gradual familiarization with the deck and some guest feeding, so it was not a completely encounter-free baseline.
The behaviour list distinguished activities such as eating, resting and moving from repetitive patterns classified as stereotypies. For giraffes, these included pacing, persistent object licking, tongue play and mane biting. Some activities could occur simultaneously, such as rumination during pacing; the researchers accounted for both rather than forcing every scan into one exclusive category.
This approach made sustained monitoring feasible for staff. Its cost was limited resolution. The observation windows were removed from the public feeding itself, leaving the moments immediately before, during and after a session largely outside the record.
What changed for the giraffes?
Stereotypic behaviour appeared in about eight percent of giraffe observations overall. The proportions differed among individuals, but comparisons across the three study phases did not establish a clear change. More guests at a session were not clearly associated with a greater likelihood of recording stereotypy afterwards.
A restricted analysis of midday and afternoon observations found fewer stereotypies later in the season. That could be consistent with increasing familiarity, but the pattern disappeared when morning observations were included. Behaviour might instead have shifted to another part of the day. The result therefore does not demonstrate a general reduction in stress.
Hay eating differed across the phases in an overall test, but the subsequent pairwise comparisons did not remain significant after adjustment. The study also did not weigh daily hay consumption. Fewer observations of eating at one time would not necessarily mean that less hay was consumed over the full day.
The zebra were quiet, but not unchanged
No zebra stereotypies were recorded. Their other activities nevertheless varied. Zebra were observed eating hay less often and standing without eating more often on non-feeding days than on feeding days or in the pre-season period. Interaction with enrichment was more common on feeding days than before the season.
Those changes are not automatically signs of better or worse welfare. The timed feeder could make movements toward the giraffe deck a cue that hay was available elsewhere. Seasonal increases in browse used for enrichment could also affect how much time zebra spent with it. The study did not record every management variable needed to distinguish these explanations.
The absence of recorded stereotypy is also narrower than absence of all possible harm. The zebra behaviour list might omit relevant responses, rare events could fall between scans, and the study included only three animals. No hormone measurements supplied a separate physiological assessment.
Keepers described occasional giraffe displacement from the deck by nearby zebra, even though no aggressive encounters appeared in the scheduled scans. That contrast shows why records of routine management and structured observation can contribute different information.
Looking at welfare from both sides of the fence
A separate Oakland Zoo survey found that visitors rated a giraffe social group more positively after two animals joined it. That result concerns what people inferred from the scene. The Seneca Park investigation instead asked what the animals were doing, including neighbours a visitor might not consider participants in the encounter.
Neither kind of evidence replaces the other. Visitor responses can reveal questions that need explaining, while animal observations test consequences that a pleasant-looking encounter can conceal.
The keeper-led study also identified a way to improve its own method: observers should demonstrate consistent behaviour classification before collecting data. Six keepers contributed here, but agreement among them was not formally tested. Adding checks of observer consistency and observations closer to feeding times would strengthen the next assessment.
For this programme, the sampled behaviours offered no clear evidence of increasing stereotypy in giraffes and none recorded in zebra. The more durable contribution is the expanded unit of attention. A giraffe encounter is an event in a shared habitat, and its non-participating animals belong in the welfare question.
Sources
- Sarah E. Koopman, Lindsay Brinda and Louis DiVincenti (2023). “Behavioural effects of a giraffe public feeding programme on Masai giraffe Giraffa tippelskirchi and plains zebra Equus quagga in a mixed-species exhibit.” Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 11(1), 249–258. Full paper.
- Wilson C. Sherman, Darren E. Minier, Caterina N. Meyers and Michelle L. Myers (2022). “The More the Merrier? Zoo Visitors’ Affective Responses and Perceptions of Welfare across an Increase in Giraffe Density.” Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens 3, 289–299. Full paper.
