Table 1.
Data captured through the zoo registration process and web portal that were used as the basis for variable creation.
Fig 1.
Illustration of the process by which elephant managers provided social time budget information for an elephant (Brownie) that was a member of 4 social groups and spent time in each social group option during the Day during November.
This interface was presented sequentially for all elephants at a zoo. When applicable, fields were auto-filled to reflect the fact that by definition time assigned to one member of a social group must apply to all members of that social group. The software also verified that the values entered summed to 100.
Fig 2.
Illustration of the process by which elephant managers provided housing time budget information for the hypothetical social group “Brownie, Tanner and Peaches”, which spent time in three environments during the Day during November.
This interface was presented sequentially for all social groups and the software assigned values to all members of the social group in the database. The software also verified that the values entered summed to 100.
Table 2.
Description of variables created from the space and social information on manager’s survey, indicating unit of analysis, unit of measurement, time scale for which each variable was evaluated, and calculation method.
Fig 3.
The number of elephants with various Night lengths.
Black bars indicate January, grey bars indicate July.
Table 3.
Housing, flooring, and social variables for the population (Overall, Day, Night) showing means, standard errors, and ranges.
Day and Night values were compared using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test.
Fig 4.
The number of elephants with particular amounts of relative space and social change from Day to Night.
Black bars indicate relative space experience change and grey bars indicate relative social experience change. Values close to zero indicate no day to night change, values close to 1 indicate greater experience in the day and values close to -1 indicate larger experience at night.
Table 4.
Housing, flooring, and social variables (Overall) by species and sex including means and standard errors.
Comparisons between African and Asian elephants, and male and female elephants, were made using the Mann-Whitney U (Wilcoxon Rank Sum) test.
Fig 5.
Frequency of number of elephants experiencing percentages of time for selected space and social measures.
(A) Outdoors; (B) In/Out Choice; (C) Indoors; (D) On Hard Surfaces; (E) Housed Separately; (F) With Restricted Physical Access; and (G) With Juveniles (<7 years old). Bins include ranges of no experience (0%), 1–10, 11–20, 21–30, 31–40, 41–50, 51–60, 61–70, 71–80, 81–90, and 91–100% time. Dark gray bars indicate Overall experience, light gray bars indicate Daytime experience, and black bars indicate Nighttime experience.
Fig 6.
Overall Space Experience for every elephant in the study population A) Total Overall Space Experience where Space Experience is averaged over both day and night periods and includes Indoor, Outdoor, and Environments with In/Out Choice; B) Overall Space Experience Outdoor; C) Overall Space Experience Indoor; D) Overall Space Experience In/Out Choice.
Fig 7.
Each elephant’s Overall Total Space Experience compared to the Total Exhibit Size at its zoo. The solid line represents the relationship that would exist if the elephants experienced 100% of the Total Exhibit space.
Fig 8.
Proportion Social Experienced.
Each elephant’s Overall Social Experience is compared to number of elephants in the Herd at its zoo. The solid line represents the relationship that would exist if the elephants spent all their time as a full Herd.