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Enrichment comes from activities that mentally and physically stimulate an animal’s mind, body, and senses. These activities often mimic the animals’ instinctive, species specific behaviours. Westlund (1) proposed that enrichment should:

• Provide the animal with greater control over its environment
• Expand behavioural options
• Encourage species-specific behaviours
• Enable the animal to effectively handle challenges.

Like many scientific concepts, there is not one single agreed definition of enrichment but a tapestry of information which aims to define the concept. Enrichment was first introduced for animals in zoos in the 19th or 20th Century (2) as a way to address these animals’ lack of control whilst living in captivity (3).

Enrichment was also borne out of the desire to reduce observed stereotypies seen in zoo animals (4). Stereotypies are repetitive sounds or movements that are performed by animals when under significant mental distress such as tail chasing in dogs, over grooming in cats and crib biting in horses .

Types of enrichment

1. Enrichment can be further categorised into as many as 14 subcategories (5), but for the purpose of this post I will only cover 5 (6).
2. Social – this can be interaction with other animals (same or different species) as well as human interaction such as in training activities.
3. Physical/environmental – in zoos, this type of enrichment aims to stimulate exploratory behaviours and keep animals active.
4. Cognitive/manipulative – keeping animals mentally stimulated through problem solving activities, investigation and exploratory behaviours. Cognitive stimulation may help to prevent degenerative neurological conditions such as dementia.
5. Food based – this can be the type of food or the method of food delivery.
6. Sensory – stimulate olfactory (smell & taste), auditory (sound), visual or tactile (touch) senses. A lot of sensory enrichment is passive, meaning the animal does it independently of the owner/handler.
7. One activity may provide many different types of enrichment, for example a feeding puzzle would provide cognitive, food based and sensory enrichment.

Examples

• Social – play with conspecifics (same species), interspecifics (different species) human-animal interaction, plush toys
• Physical/environmental – water, climbing structures, toy box, bed
• Cognitive/manipulative – novel items, puzzle feeders, ball
• Food based – scatter feeding, frozen food, licky toys, hidden food, hanging food
• Sensory – mirrors, noisemaking toys, scratch poles

Musical dogs

As I’m sure many of you do, I will always leave some form of ‘noise’ for my dog when I go out, whether that’s TV or music.

One paper published in 2020 (7), aimed to understand the impact of musical therapy for dogs and its potential applications for veterinary medicine by reviewing existing research.

Music has incredibly powerful therapeutic benefits for many species. Classical music was shown to reduce stress and increase milk production in dairy cows (how cool is that!?).

For dogs, individual anatomical differences between breeds such as size and head shape will impact the perception of auditory stimuli (sounds), meaning not all dogs will respond in the same way to music.

In a number of studies, classical music was shown to increase relaxed behaviours in dogs such as lying down, and sleeping, and decreased vocalisations (barking). Rock and heavy metal music was shown to increase undesirable behaviour, produce physiological changes and lead to more barking.

So, what are the implications for you and your dog? Try leaving the radio on classic FM next time you go out as it will more than likely help your dog to stay calm in your absence.

Cats don’t like human music

A study conducted in 2015 (8), proposed that cats would prefer music that is specifically designed to stimulate the auditory frequency they are able to perceive, when compared with human music. Unlike the previous study mentioned about dogs, cats are relatively similar in size across breeds and therefore the results should be similar for all domestic felines.

Snowdon and colleagues proposed a theory regarding auditory enrichment for animals. They suggested that elements of music that are used to convey emotions for humans might also work for other animals. This species specific approach aims to develop music which fits the sensory abilities and communication methods of each animal being studied.\

In this particular study of cats, the researchers played 3 minute clips of either music created specifically for cats, or human music. They evaluated the cats’ behaviour and vocalisations to determine if the cat wanted to approach or avoid the sounds being played to them. The approach behaviours included purring, moving towards the speaker and sniffing the speaker. The avoidance behaviours included leaving the room, hissing and arched back.

The results of this study showed the cats did in fact prefer music which was written specifically for their species over music which has been written for humans. The researchers have also conducted studies into other species and concluded that auditory enrichment needs to be appropriate for the type of animal listening to it for it to be effective.

References

(1) Westlund, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2013.12.009
(2) Mellen, 2001. DOI: 10.1002/zoo.1021
(3) Martin, 1999. https://naturalencounters.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Enrichment_What_It_Is_And_Why_Should_You_Want_It-Steve_Martin.pdf
(4) Swaisgood and Shepherdson, 2005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.20066
(5) https://petharmonytraining.com/dog-enrichment-categories-explained/
(6) https://zoosnippets.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-enrichment#google_vignette
(7) Lindig, McGreevy and Crean, 2020. DOI: 10.3390/ani10010127
(8) Snowdon, Teie and Savage, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2015.02.012