If we want to make reintroduction and introduction programs successful than behaviors of released animals should be addressed while releasin...
If we want to make reintroduction and introduction programs successful than behaviors of released animals should be addressed while releasing the animals in any habitat.
Social Animals Learning: When social animals such as mammals and birds grow in wild, they learn about their environment from their members of community especially from their partners. They learn how to interact with other members of the population. They learn how to search for food, how to get that and consume that food.
For Carnivores such as lions and wild dogs, hunting techniques are complex and these require a teamwork.
Herbivores such as Hornbills and Gibbons have to learn the seasonal migration patterns to obtain the variety of food by covering a large area to make them alive. They are also taught in family groups how to capture and find food. Many species perform some cues or rituals to attract the mate.
ANIMALS RAISED IN CAPTIVITY
Animals that are raised in captivity (in separate preserved area species are grown with special conditions provision) they are restricted to a cage or pen and no exploration to other animals in wild is required. They have no need to learn how to search food or how to compete with other species for food. They are not learned how to interact with other species. They are given food on schedule in their cages. Social behavior of species are greatly effected by captivity because they are grown alone in unnatural grouping e.g. single gender or same age groups). Social skills are not developed in that individuals such as find food, sense, danger finding mate partners, raise young ones.
TRAINING FOR BUILDING BEHAVIORAL SKILLS
For overcoming this problem captive bred mammals and birds should be trained before and after releasing into the environment. They must learn how to avoid predators, find food, interact with other species. Captive animals are learnt how to fear from potential predators by frightening by a dummy predator. Captive techniques should be built.
Examples
Captive Chimps for example are learnt how to use twigs to feed on termites or how to build nests in captivity.
Red Wolves are learnt how to kill live prey.
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
Social interactions are one of the difficult behavior being adopted in species. One successful attempt used is to pair the captive bred individual with the wild animals and released together. Wild animals acted as instructors.
For example, Golden Lion Temarin wild specie is introduced with captive bred Golden Lion Temarin specie. Captive bred specie learn from wild ones.
Humans also mimic as predators to captive bred individuals so to adapt them from predators.
For Example, Condor hatchlings are not adapted to learn behavior of their relative wild species. They are fed with condor puppets and kept from sight of visitors so that they could recognize their own species and could differentiate their species from humans.
Some captive bred species when released in wild they mate with wild species and make a social group. They learned from them. But it is not a successful practice for birds. Wild birds during migration became a cause of high mortality rate of captive bred bald ibis.
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