The Accuracy of Behavioural Data Collected by Visitors in a Zoo Environment: Can Visitors Collect Meaningful Data?

Table 1

Ethogram used by a trained biologist to record simple otter behaviours.

Behaviour	Comments and additional information
Inside	“Inside” is not a behaviour, but it was necessary to record this so that the period of time that the otters spent inside was included in the activity budget (it was speculated that visitors may underrecord otters when they were inside—Section  4).
Swimming	In water, not interacting with other otters and/or showing signs of play.^*
Eating	This occurred mainly during twice-daily public demonstrations.
Playing	Any playful interaction with another otter (such as chasing, play fighting) or playing alone (diving/rolling in the water, playing with an object).^*
Walking or running	As stated.
Grooming	Self-grooming or mutual grooming (if mutual grooming occurred, all otters involved were recorded as grooming).
Rolling	Rolling on land.
Sitting or lying down	Inactive animal (included pausing for a few seconds but also sleeping outside).
Fighting	This was never recorded with the ethogram, though the otters did display aggressive behaviour over food on one occasion (outside a recording period), so it is possible that visitors could have recorded this.
Other	Any behaviour not mentioned above, for example, sprainting, climbing a tree, and drinking.
Out of view	If an otter was not observable at any point during a sampling interval such that its behaviour could not be recorded (i.e., under the pedestrian walkway or hidden in vegetation).

^*See Section  4 for comments about the differentiation of swimming and playing.