A Nottingham professor’s app is being used to track the happiness of captive elephants worldwide.
Dr Lisa Yon has co-developed the behaviour-based tool which could revolutionise how the industry cares for its animals and guide government policies.
The app, called EBWAT, allows animal keepers to track the observed behaviour and demeanour of elephants through data and improve care.
It provides an automated report with graphs and charts that summarise the giant mammals’ results over time.
For elephant keepers, the days of carrying around bits of paper and sitting at a computer days later to transfer everything could be gone.
Dr Yon said: “The data makes the assessment and judges the emotional expressivity of the animal’s body language.
“Are they feeling happy or joyful or exuberant, or do they seem to be behaving in a way which suggests they are lethargic or depressed or sad or withdrawn?”
And the app may end up influencing government policies.
The Elephant Welfare Project – based at the University of Nottingham – was asked to make suggestions for policy guidelines some years back, but there was not enough scientific evidence.
Dr Yon is hoping it will be another outcome of the tool.
She said: “We went to the scientific literature and scoured through everything we could but there just wasn’t that much there.
“So we also wanted a way for us to be able to gather data over time so we’ll have robust scientific evidence to make really good recommendations for policy and practice for individual facilities, zoos, regional organisations, governments and international policies.”
Zimbabwe, South Africa, Thailand, India, Singapore, the US and various countries across Europe are utilising the tool.
But some elephant species in those areas – Asian and African – are endangered.
Asian elephants have been endangered since 1986, and African since 2021.
Dr Yon hopes the app will contribute to saving the species.
She said: “Part of trying to maintain these animals as they are dying out in the wild is looking after our captive population as well, because those animals could represent a really important resource.
“Obviously in terms of having a thriving captive population, looking after their welfare is incredibly important.
“They’re not going to survive, to flourish, to breed well, to thrive in captivity unless we look after their welfare.”
Dr Yon will be talking more about elephant welfare at her Pint of Science seminar “Hidden Life: Elephants to Microbes” on 18 May at The Blind Rabbit.
Readers can find out more about her work here.
