Why and how should we use environmental enrichment to tackle stereotypic behaviour?

Mason, Clubb, Latham and Vickery reviewed the evidence that environmental enrichment reduces stereotypies, and found the picture more nuanced than commonly assumed. Across studies, enrichment often reduced but rarely eliminated stereotypic behaviour, and reductions in stereotypy did not always mean genuinely improved welfare. They distinguished enrichments that address the underlying motivation from those that merely provide a competing activity, urging designers to target the specific thwarted behaviours driving each stereotypy. The review also stressed measuring multiple welfare outcomes, not just stereotypy counts. For felids it implies that hunting-style and foraging enrichments aimed at predatory motivation are more likely to help than generic novelty, and that persistence of pacing should not be read as enrichment failure.