As what I see in your problem here, I think you need to visit a zoological garden and coordinate with the department there. Have an interview with the concerned people within the field and see whether you could discover informative ideas from them; what you are really looking for might be discussed and could possibly give you a better hint on your next step.

In my experience when we had our on-the-job training way back four years ago, problems that I saw as a common problem in one of the zoological gardens that we had our training with was the necessary space needed for every animal that is captivated. The garden is no longer enough to contain the needs of some animals.(It’s actually a zoo within one of the busiest and quite polluted cities) As I remember an area there, they were building new cages to contain birds and some horses and zebras. Another, this garden is being maintained under the budget of the local municipality. I think it is also a factor to consider. If the budget allocated won’t be enough to sustain the garden’s needs, that would also affect the maintenance of the garden as well. I hope that this would be alright with you.

In your area, there’s a lot of creativity in designing tests to delve into what’s going on in an animal’s mind – how do you tell that an animal can anticipate consequences, or interpret what another individual may be thinking? How do you assess intelligence with a test that will actually work, but for which an animal can’t use special senses to "cheat the system"?

If you are limited in your test subjects, can you design a generalized test that can be repeated with just a few individuals and can give implications for the species as a whole?