Lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs in zoos frequently fail to receive the space and enrichment they need. Welfare science is driving improvements in big cat exhibit design and management.
Big cat welfare in zoos is shaped primarily by exhibit size, social housing, and enrichment quality. Pacing stereotypies are among the most visible indicators of welfare failure in big cats and correlate with inadequate space and stimulation. High-welfare big cat facilities provide large, complex exhibits with environmental variability, olfactory enrichment using animal scents, and feeding enrichment that triggers natural predatory sequences. The most ambitious programs provide hectares of naturalistic habitat — still far from wild home ranges but dramatically better than traditional zoo exhibits.