In catering to captive animal welfare, an important facet that is often overlooked is ensuring that animals sleep an appropriate duration of time. Providing an exhibit that encourages sleeping behaviour is essential, and should be designed to the species’ specifications and needs.

Elephants can sleep standing up and lying down, but providing them with the opportunity for lateral recumbence allows them to remove their hefty weight off their feet. The Wildlife Conservation and Science department has set out to discover if Melbourne Zoo’s five Asian elephants are spending adequate periods of time sleeping laterally, and where they preferred to sleep. To do this, staff and volunteers have been watching nocturnal video footage of the elephants and recording the length of time the animals spend sleeping lying down, and where this occurs. At night, the elephants have access indoors and outdoors, and to a variety of potential sleeping substrates. This provides opportunities for the animals to express a choice in where to sleep, whilst also catering to changes in behaviour due to seasonal differences in nocturnal temperatures.

Any preferences by the animals, as determined by this research, will assist keepers in their husbandry management of the elephants. Monitoring of sleeping patterns will also aid us in picking up differences in behaviour over time, which may be related to the elephants’ welfare and health.