This thesis investigates the effects of different music genres on the behavior and spatial preferences of captive African elephants, with the aim of improving their welfare and management strategies. Given the growing concern among zoological professionals about the impact of captivity on the health …

South Boom Boom is an attempt to survive in apnea, a continuous labor, a possibility to re-imagine the world, a way to escape captivity, to draw fugitive lines, to resist, to fight and fly, to conceive resistances, to migrate, to reinvent a catastrophe, to deform the shapes of oppression across time. This …

There are currently about 2220 individual ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) living in Madagascar, which has caused the species to be red-listed as critically endangered since 2018. To prevent the species from going extinct conservation strategies have been established. Because ring-tailed lemurs have …

Many of Calabar, Nigeria and the state of Cross River’s cultural heritage is falling into disrepair and the reasons for this are vast and nuanced. Meaning that the artefacts and objects both natural and built that exist and add to the identity of Calabar’s cultural space could disappear or become even …

Howler monkeys (genus Alouatta) are new world monkeys native to Central and South America. Although the overall population of howler monkeys is declining due to habitat loss and the illegal trade, their status, as categorised by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (2017), ranges from Least Concern …

A tangible proof of the meaning and scope of human flourishing that can change not only organizations but also entire societies, is given by Robert Schuman, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs who launched the Schuman Declaration (1950) that gave birth to the EU. His leitmotiv was to be a faithful …

The conservation status of the trumpeter species varies from least concern to critically endangered according to the IUCN since 2014. The conservation statuses are based on future deforestation in the Amazon basin and on the fact that the species is vulnerable to being hunted. It is concluded that the …

Due to improved zoo practices, longevity in zoo animals has increased. In comparison to the wild, many species become much older in captivity. Senescence follows a different path in each species and is therefore hard to generalize towards other species. Insights into the process of senescence in animals …

Despite the polar bears’ long history of high popularity in zoo settings, many studies indicate that this wide-ranging species expresses many abnormal repetitive behaviours in captivity, such as stereotypic walking, head swinging and repetitive swimming bouts. This is also the case in the male polar …

There is no clear overview of the current dietary practices and problems with regard to elephants within Dutch and Belgian zoos, so to be able to assess whether zoos comply with current requirements. The goal of this study was to gain insight in the present feeding practices of the African (Loxodonta …