29th October 2013
Today with 2nd year animal behaviour I went to Cotswold wildlife park to look at the behaviour of some of the animals. Our main task was to produce an ethogram. An ethogram is basically a table that categorizes different behaviours that are observed by a certain animal/group of animals. I decided to choose the meerkats. They were quite interesting to watch because dogs are allowed on site and there was a dog nearby that kept popping its head up. The meerkats would scurry to their indoor enclosure then as a park return to the last place they had seen a potential threat. It was facinsting to watch!
We then had a talk from one of the rhino keepers which was very interesting. They have 3 adult rhino that arent fully mature yet (8 years old is considered mature) and they also have a baby rhino called Astrid who was conceived naturally. This is unusual because rhino have a female dominated species and with only 1 male in the herd it doesn't normally work. I will upload the notes I took from the talk when I'm at my computer!
After looking at all the animals we didn't have time to actually fill in the ethogram and observe the meerkats for a period of time. However I would quite like to do this in my spare time as I find it so interesting and therapeutic to just sit and observe!
No comments:
Post a Comment