Wild Animals Get Stressed Out, Too
By Kelley Weir
We know that our pets can get stressed out, but what about wild animals? What would they have to worry about?
It turns out, the answer is us.
Human activities can negatively affect wildlife populations and, in some cases, may result in long-term stress and health problems in individual animals. Bears appear to be particularly affected. Aside from the normal stressors, like searching for prey, foraging for food or merely surviving the winter, human interference, like habitat encroachment, has been shown to cause long-term stress in bears.
With funding from Morris Animal Foundation, Dr. David Janz and his team from the University of Saskatchewan developed and validated a noninvasive technique to measure a primary stress hormone, cortisol, in hair collected from grizzly bears and polar bears. The grizzlies were from the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada, where they are listed as threatened. The polar bears were from the Hudson Bay region of Canada, which is the southernmost extent of their current range in the world. The research team confirmed that hair cortisol testing is a sensitive and reliable measure of long-term stress in wildlife. And the test will likely help other wild species, too.
“We believe that our careful attention to details associated with ensuring accuracy and precision of hair cortisol measurement will be recognized by other researchers using or planning on using this technique,” says Dr. Janz.
Already the team was contacted by researchers studying other populations of grizzly/brown bears in Canada, Scandinavia and Mongolia as well as other populations of polar bears in northern Canada and Alaska.
This test can be used for any mammal with hair, including other free-ranging wildlife and zoo animals, and may help conservation managers and zoo veterinarians rapidly assess the stress level of animals.
“Traditional wildlife biology approaches to measure population health can take years. Our test takes a few hours, and may provide 'early warning' of health problems in individual bears before they cause population health problems,” says Dr. Janz.
The researchers were also able to describe many key methods for utilizing this test, making it more accessible for other researchers who would use it and allowing for outcomes that are more accurate.
“We are also collaborating with researchers studying ringed seals in Hudson Bay, harbor seals in Alaska, northern elephant seals breeding in California, caribou and reindeer from Alaska, mule deer from Saskatchewan, moose from Norway, and African elephants from Zimbabwe,” says Dr. Janz. “The funding from Morris Animal Foundation helped with us receiving international recognition of our work, which led to these collaborations.”
Posted by MAFon January 9, 2012.
Categories: Animal health, Animal welfare, Wildlife health
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