From left to right all through the night: Characteristics of lying rest in zoo elephants.

Despite increased research during the past years, many characteristics of resting behavior in elephants are still unknown. For example, there is only limited data suggesting elephants express longer lying bouts and increased total nightly lying durations on soft substrates as compared to hard surfaces. Additionally, it has not been investigated how frequently elephants change body sides between lying bouts. Here we present these characteristics based on observations of nighttime lying behavior in 10 zoo elephants (5 African Loxodonta africana and 5 Asian Elephas maximus elephants) living in five different European facilities. We found that elephants housed on soft substrates have significantly increased total lying durations per night and longer average lying bouts. Furthermore, at 70%-85% of all bouts, a consistently higher frequency of side change between lying bouts occurred on soft substrates, leading to an overall equal laterality in resting behavior. Deviations from this pattern became evident in elephants living on nonsand flooring or/and in nondominant individuals of nonfamily groups, respectively. Based on our findings, we consider elephants to normally have several lying bouts per night with frequent side changes, given an appropriate substrate and healthy social environment. We encourage elephant-keeping facilities to monitor these characteristics in their elephants' nighttime behavior to determine opportunities for further improvements and detect alterations putatively indicating social or health problems in individual elephants at an early stage.

Digesta retention patterns of solute and different-sized particles in camelids compared with ruminants and other foregut fermenters.

The mean retention times (MRT) of solute or particles in the gastrointestinal tract and the forestomach (FS) are crucial determinants of digestive physiology in herbivores. Besides ruminants, camelids are the only herbivores that have evolved rumination as an obligatory physiological process consisting of repeated mastication of large food particles, which requires a particle sorting mechanism in the FS. Differences between camelids and ruminants have hardly been investigated so far. In this study we measured MRTs of solute and differently sized particles (2, 10, and 20 mm) and the ratio of large-to-small particle MRT, i.e. the selectivity factors (SF(10/2mm), SF(20/2mm), SF(20/10mm)), in three camelid species: alpacas (Vicugna pacos), llamas (Llama glama), and Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus). The camelid data were compared with literature data from ruminants and non-ruminant foregut fermenters (NRFF). Camelids and ruminants both had higher SF(10/2mm)FS than NRFF, suggesting convergence in the function of the FS sorting mechanism in contrast to NRFF, in which such a sorting mechanism is absent. The SF(20/10mm)FS did not differ between ruminants and camelids, indicating that there is a particle size threshold of about 1 cm in both suborders above which particle retention is not increased. Camelids did not differ from ruminants in MRT(2mm)FS, MRTsoluteFS, and the ratio MRT(2mm)FS/MRTsoluteFS, but they were more similar to 'cattle-' than to 'moose-type' ruminants. Camelids had higher SF(10/2mm)FS and higher SF(20/2mm)FS than ruminants, indicating a potentially slower particle sorting in camelids than in ruminants, with larger particles being retained longer in relation to small particles.

Methane emission by camelids.

Methane emissions from ruminant livestock have been intensively studied in order to reduce contribution to the greenhouse effect. Ruminants were found to produce more enteric methane than other mammalian herbivores. As camelids share some features of their digestive anatomy and physiology with ruminants, it has been proposed that they produce similar amounts of methane per unit of body mass. This is of special relevance for countrywide greenhouse gas budgets of countries that harbor large populations of camelids like Australia. However, hardly any quantitative methane emission measurements have been performed in camelids. In order to fill this gap, we carried out respiration chamber measurements with three camelid species (Vicugna pacos, Lama glama, Camelus bactrianus; n = 16 in total), all kept on a diet consisting of food produced from alfalfa only. The camelids produced less methane expressed on the basis of body mass (0.32±0.11 L kg⁻¹ d⁻¹) when compared to literature data on domestic ruminants fed on roughage diets (0.58±0.16 L kg⁻¹ d⁻¹). However, there was no significant difference between the two suborders when methane emission was expressed on the basis of digestible neutral detergent fiber intake (92.7±33.9 L kg⁻¹ in camelids vs. 86.2±12.1 L kg⁻¹ in ruminants). This implies that the pathways of methanogenesis forming part of the microbial digestion of fiber in the foregut are similar between the groups, and that the lower methane emission of camelids can be explained by their generally lower relative food intake. Our results suggest that the methane emission of Australia's feral camels corresponds only to 1 to 2% of the methane amount produced by the countries' domestic ruminants and that calculations of greenhouse gas budgets of countries with large camelid populations based on equations developed for ruminants are generally overestimating the actual levels.