Over the past few decades, the concept of animal welfare has become increasingly prominent in Western societies. Faced with this collective awareness, various organisations are now making it a point of honour to consider the...
Vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) are considered pests by farmers and homeowners. Consequent attempts to exterminate problem adult vervet monkeys often result in orphaned young offspring, which are sometimes taken to wildlife rehabilitation centers. We assessed...
Assessing quality of life in animals is an art as much as a science. Despite the use of questionnaires and keeper reports which consider several aspects of well-being, the process often remains subjective. Keepers have...
Keystone individuals are expected to disproportionately contribute to group stability. For instance, rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) who police conflict contribute towards stability. Not all individuals’ motivations align with mechanisms of group stability. In wild systems...
Sleep is an important contributor to good physical and mental health and an important component of post-surgical recovery. The assessment of dark phase (‘nighttime’) behavior can provide insight into the efficacy of analgesic treatments and...
Parallel laser photogrammetry (PLP), which consists of attaching two or three parallel laser beams at a known inter-beam distance to a camera, can be used to collect morphological measurements of organisms noninvasively. The lasers project...
We report on an analytical and biological validation of a commercial cortisol enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to measure glucocorticoids (GC) in feces of Geoffroy’s spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). Validation of endocrinological methods for each sample matrix...
Enrichment is important for animal welfare and data quality. Provision of enrichment opportunities varies between species and enrichment category. However, data benchmarking these differences does not exist. Our objective was to characterize enrichment provision and...
Overexpression of abnormal behavior among captive primates indicates poor management practices. The type, frequency, and contributing factors of abnormal behaviors vary highly across individual animals in captive settings. This study explored if sex, rearing history...
Environmental enrichment is an animal husbandry principle that seeks to provide the stimuli necessary for the optimal physiological and psychological well-being of animals. Due to primates having highly developed visual systems, there have been limited...