Species-appropriate nutrition is fundamental to zoo animal welfare; feeding the right foods, in appropriate forms, that engage natural foraging behavior is essential to wellbeing.
Nutrition in zoo animals must satisfy both physical health and behavioral needs. Providing species-appropriate food in species-appropriate forms - scatter feeding, puzzle feeders, carcass provision for carnivores, browse provision for browsers - engages the foraging behaviors that constitute a significant proportion of natural behavioral time budgets. A tiger fed processed chunks of meat from a bowl cannot express the behavioral complexity of hunting, subduing, and consuming prey that occupies hours of wild tiger time. Behavioral nutrition - providing food that engages appropriate foraging behaviors - is a key frontier in zoo animal welfare.