Using Thermography to Evaluate Impacts of Limb Inflammation on Giraffe

Students: Kate Fox, Victoria Burnal-Byrd, Erika Defer

Faculty Mentor: Derek Girman

Biology

College of Science, Technology, and Business

There are over 1,500 giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) kept in captivity, typically for the purposes of conservation education. Support for captive breeding requires that individuals are managed to ensure the safety and well-being of the individuals under human care. In captive giraffes, foot ailments are the predominant cause of lameness. In this research, we aim to develop a gait scoring system that can be used for early detection of lameness associated with limb tissue inflammation to assist in detecting foot health issues well before individuals become chronically impaired. We used non-invasive thermographic imaging to identify inflammation in hooves. We compared stride lengths as measured on the ground with those estimated from digital video imaging analysis among inflamed and non-inflamed individuals to verify video-based gait evaluation. As an initial step in developing a standardized gait evaluation system, preliminary results show a significant relationship between non-inflamed and inflamed individuals. Through ethogram analysis of spatial use by individuals, we also found that individuals with inflammation used reduced portions of their habitat compared to individuals without limb inflammation. The future of this project is to refine a suite of locomotory motion measurements from digital analyses that further identify and categorize the initiation of lameness from limb inflammation.