Assessing Animal Welfare in Animal-Visitor Interactions in Zoos and Other Facilities. A Pilot Study Involving Giraffes

Two giraffes joined visitor feeding; two others stayed away. At an Italian zoo, the animals could approach people offering vegetables across a fence, but they did not have to. That difference between an available encounter and an unavoidable one became central to an assessment of how visitor feeding affected their welfare.

Simona Normando, Ilaria Pollastri and colleagues observed four male giraffes at Zoom biopark near Turin. They filmed seven feeding encounters and seven comparable periods without an encounter, recording behaviour before, during and afterwards. They also examined the enclosure, staff procedures and possible risks from handling, injury and disease transmission. Two males regularly participated, while the other two did not.

The participating giraffes spent more time ingesting food during encounters. Otherwise, the researchers found no significant behavioural changes between encounter and control periods, and recorded no escape attempts, aggression or avoidance of visitors. Their risk assessment was low overall, with the freedom to decline or withdraw an important safeguard. The brief study included no hormone measurements and did not explain why two animals stayed away, so it cannot certify all feeding programmes as harmless. It shows how a welfare assessment can begin with individual responses and genuine opportunities not to participate.