Environmental enrichment: a GAP analysis

De Azevedo, Cipreste and Young surveyed the published enrichment literature to identify which taxa, enrichment types and research questions were well studied and which were neglected. They found research heavily biased toward certain charismatic species and enrichment categories, with large gaps in others, and called for more systematic, hypothesis-driven and broadly distributed enrichment research. The analysis highlighted that much enrichment practice rested on limited evidence and that the field needed to address under-studied species and rigorously evaluate outcomes. For carnivores and felids it underscored that, despite popular attention, the evidence base for specific enrichment techniques remained uneven, guiding researchers toward filling documented gaps.