FiberNEW2026-08

Adjusting Our Thinking About Feeding Animals: Fiber as the Metric for Mimicking Natural Diets.

Clauss Marcus, Janssens Geert P J, Pritchard Moore Oliver, Byrne Sarah et al. — Zoo biology

Summary

This paper suggests that fiber is a crucial, often overlooked nutrient in the diets of animals under human care, from pets to zoo animals. Despite being harder to digest, fiber supports gut health, helps prevent obesity, and can improve behavior. The authors propose that increasing fiber to levels found in natural diets could significantly enhance animal well-being, highlighting a potential parallel for human dietary considerations.

AI-generated summary — read the original

Key points

Fiber is often lacking in the diets of animals cared for by humans.
Despite being harder to digest, fiber is vital for a healthy gut and preventing obesity.
High-fiber diets can also improve animal behavior by increasing feeding time.
The paper suggests that fiber levels in animal diets could reflect how well biological knowledge guides care.

What the study looked at

This paper explores why animals under human care often have different diets than their wild counterparts, specifically focusing on the role of dietary fiber. It questioned whether increasing fiber to natural levels could improve the health and behavior of these animals. This was a commentary or review paper, not an experimental study with participants. It synthesized existing knowledge and observations regarding the diets of various animals under human care, including companion animals, production animals, and zoo animals, comparing them to their natural diets. The authors drew on principles of animal nutrition and behavior. The authors found that diets provided to animals under human care are often significantly lower in fiber compared to their natural diets. They highlighted that while fiber is harder to digest, it plays a crucial role in promoting a healthy gut microbiome, preventing obesity, and improving behavior by extending feeding times. The paper concluded that increasing dietary fiber to levels found in the wild holds great potential for enhancing the health and well-being of zoo animals and other animals in human care, suggesting that fiber levels can serve as a measure of how well animal management aligns with biological understanding.

Dietary takeaway

While this study focuses on animals, its insights about fiber's importance are relevant to human health. It reminds us that prioritizing whole, unprocessed foods rich in fiber, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, can support gut health and overall well-being. Remember, this is one perspective, and dietary advice should always consider a range of research and individual needs.

Abstract

Free-ranging animals often ingest markedly different diets than their counterparts under human care, whether companion animals, production animals, or zoo animals. A nutrient with a prominent lack in the diet under human care across species is fiber. Dietary fibers are more difficult to digest than other nutrients and require microbial fermentation, typically resulting in an overall reduction of digestibility and metabolic efficiency. Nevertheless, or therefore, dietary fiber supports health, as it fosters a healthy gut microbiome and limits the risk of obesity and its comorbidities. And due to their lower energy density, high-fiber diets typically increase feeding time, and therefore reduce time available for undesired behaviors. As an adaptation to natural environments replete with high-fiber feeds, humans and animals alike have evolved gustatory preferences for low-fiber, energy-dense feeds. In zoo animal nutrition, the occurrence of both, potentially involuntary feeding of low-fiber diets due to uncritically following feeding traditions, and the deliberate deviation in fiber levels from natural diets, can be documented. Zoo staff appear to transfer their own evolved preference for high-energy feeds to the animals in their care, making zoo animal nutrition a showcase of cultural traditions clashing with biological knowledge. The fiber levels of zoo animal diets can therefore serve as a scale bar for how much zoo management is guided by biological knowledge as opposed to other factors (e.g., anthropomorphism). Increasing fiber levels, possibly to levels observed in the wild, holds great potential for further improvements in the health and behavioral management of zoo animals.

View on PubMed →DOI: 10.1002/zoo.70104