ZooMonitor Community aims to scale behavior research across zoos

A new paper in Animals spotlights ZooMonitor Community as a tool for tackling population-level behavior questions in zoos and aquariums, reflecting a broader push toward larger, more standardized welfare research collaborations. The concept is straightforward: use a shared digital platform to collect behavior data in the same way across institutions, then analyze those data at a scale that can support stronger inferences about housing, husbandry, and wellbeing. That matters because behavior is often the most practical welfare indicator available across diverse species, from hoofstock to elasmobranchs. (zoomonitor.org)

The backdrop is a familiar one in zoo and aquarium science. Accredited institutions routinely transfer and breed animals across facilities, but local differences in enclosure design, climate, social grouping, feeding strategies, and daily management can shape outcomes in ways that are hard to compare. Lincoln Park Zoo developed ZooMonitor as a web application to record and visualize behavior data, with the goal of making systematic monitoring accessible to both experts and trained non-experts. Over time, the platform has grown beyond single-zoo use; Lincoln Park Zoo says ZooMonitor has been referenced in more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, and the tool is used for behavior, space-use, enrichment, and welfare-focused projects. (zoomonitor.org)

What changed with ZooMonitor Community is the collaboration layer. According to Lincoln Park Zoo and AZA, the expanded system was supported by an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant and was designed to address the logistical barriers that often derail multi-institution studies: inconsistent methods, uneven observer training, fragmented communication, and awkward data sharing. The project added tools for shared project management, observer training and testing materials, and comparative analytics, with input from an advisory committee that included staff from 17 zoos, six aquariums, and three zoo groups. (aza.org)

One of the clearest examples of how that infrastructure translates into research is a 2025 PLOS One giraffe study led by Jason Wark and Katherine Cronin. The study used ZooMonitor Community to coordinate behavior data collection on 66 giraffes at 18 AZA-accredited zoos across the U.S., generating 8,330 ten-minute observation sessions collected from January 2022 through March 2023. Observers followed a standardized ethogram and had to pass a three-step training and reliability process, including a required mean agreement score of at least 85%. The study found that environmental and temporal factors influenced giraffe behavior more than many fixed institutional variables, but it also identified management-relevant signals, including a negative association between oral stereotypies and browsing or extractive foraging. (journals.plos.org)

Industry reaction has centered less on splashy claims and more on usability and research quality. In an AZA feature on the platform, Emily Lynch of North Carolina Zoo said ZooMonitor is used for projects ranging from behavior to space-use monitoring and described it as accessible to data collectors with varying levels of expertise. Jason Wark, Lincoln Park Zoo animal welfare scientist and ZooMonitor product manager, said multi-institutional research is crucial because many zoo studies are statistically underpowered when they rely on only a few animals. Aimee Little of Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens said the ability to share smartphone videos and communicate openly with project leaders helped teams align on more difficult behavior definitions. (aza.org)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this is less about a software feature and more about decision quality. Welfare-related clinical questions often sit at the intersection of medicine, behavior, nutrition, environment, and daily care. If a team is trying to understand whether a feeding program, habitat modification, social change, or thermal environment is affecting stereotypy, inactivity, foraging, or breeding-related behavior, a standardized multi-site dataset can be far more informative than local impressions alone. It also creates a more defensible evidence base when veterinarians are working with curators, behavior staff, and keepers on preventive care plans or recommending husbandry changes that may require operational tradeoffs. (journals.plos.org)

There’s also a workforce angle. The giraffe project relied on trained observers that included volunteers, interns, researchers, keepers, and video-based observation, showing that large-scale welfare monitoring doesn’t always require a large in-house research department, as long as training and reliability are built in. That could make population-level behavior surveillance more feasible for institutions that want stronger welfare data but have limited dedicated research capacity. (journals.plos.org)

What to watch: The next test is whether ZooMonitor Community consistently produces publishable, management-changing findings across additional taxa. AZA has said a second pilot study is underway in weedy sea dragons, a species with limited breeding success in human care, and conference programming suggests the platform is still being actively promoted and refined. If more studies follow the giraffe model, veterinary teams may soon have a larger body of cross-institution evidence to inform species-specific welfare and husbandry decisions. (aza.org)