Environmental enrichment can be defined as a concept which describes how the environment of captive animals can be changed for the benefit of the inhabitants. Environmental enrichment is today commonly used in different settings with captive animals e.g. zoos. An increasing number of reports showed that environmental enrichment successfully increased the animal’s welfare in different species by e.g. reducing stereotypic behavior and increasing an animal’s natural behaviors such as breeding.

Elephants are long-living and large-brained mammals. Due to their highly-developed cognitive and sensory abilities, it is a challenge to provide captive elephants with adequate environmental enrichment in order to prevent poor welfare. Behavioral evidence suggests that Asian elephants (E.maximus) strongly rely on their sense of smell in a variety of contexts including foraging and social communication.

The aim of the present study was to present a group of captive Asian elephants (E. maximus) with a variety of odor stimuli that are not regularly part of their captive environment, and to assess their behavioral responses, Furthermore, to assess the suitability and effectiveness of both the odor stimuli used here and the means of odor presentation as environmental enrichment for captive Asian elephants (E. maximus).