At a previous institution we had a cyno who suffered from severe hair pulling. He had removed practically all hair from his body; all that was left was a patch in the middle of his...
Enrichment has been known to increase the well being and species typical behavior of captive animals. While much research has been done on the effectiveness of enrichment or captive monkeys and apes, research on enrichment...
Adriane and Kris just trained eight rhesus monkeys to present their arms in the blood sleeve for blood samples, and it took, on average ... 8 months ... 160 minutes spread out into 40 sessions.
It is well established that grooming underpins sociality in group-living primates, and a number of studies have documented the stress-reducing effects of being groomed. In this study, we quantified grooming behaviour and physiological stress (assessed...
Animals in captivity may show undesirable behaviour when they are not sufficiently challenged, making it essential for their well-being to provide daily enrichment to zoo animals. Primates need a regular replacement with novel enrichment objects...
For many animals in nature, foraging is simply a matter of traveling and discovering available food. It provides both physical exercise and mental stimulation, often consuming much of an animal’s time. Replicating this in a...
Live, direct observations are often used to collect behavioral data. However, the presence of an observer may affect the behavior of unhabituated subjects. This study was conducted to determine the effect of an observer’s presence...
The “visitor effect” problem, whether zoo visitors are stressful or enriching to zoo animals, is made difficult to analyze by numerous methodological challenges. The extremes in visitor attendance patterns during the holiday season at Disney’s...
Behavioral observations were conducted as an ongoing program of monitoring psychological well-being of chimpanzees involved in IACUC-approved preventive medicine studies. The chimpanzees were housed in a facility that provided a variety of enrichment objects, climbing...
Manipulable objects are often provided to laboratory macaques as environmental enrichment, but exposure to objects is widely believed to result in rapid habituation. Consequently, much effort is made to ensure enrichment objects are novel. Here...