Assessment of environmental enrichment for different primate species under low budget: A case study

ABSTRACT

The 2011 European Union Zoo Inquiry presented evidence that most zoos fail to achieve adequate levels of nonhuman animal welfare. Appropriate environmental enrichment (EE) can play a role in the promotion of welfare. However, financial and staff constraints frequently make it challenging to implement EE on a daily basis. The aim of this study was to test how individuals of three different nonhuman primate species at the Maia Zoo in Portugal (white-handed gibbons, Hylobates lar; Mona monkeys, Cercopithecus mona; and brown lemurs, Eulemur fulvus) reacted to EE devices. Another aim was to investigate whether simple, inexpensive devices can have positive outcomes for animal welfare. The results showed that all individuals reacted to the EE intervention, but individual responses to the EE devices differed. EE devices had consistently positive effects for all three species as demonstrated by an increase in the expression of natural behaviors and a general decrease in abnormal behaviors (46% compared with baseline). This study demonstrates that it is important to simultaneously test multiple individuals from different species in different situations to evaluate the effectiveness of EE.

KEYWORDS:

• Behavior opportunity
• case study
• environmental enrichment
• low budget
• primate welfare

Acknowledgments

This research would not have been possible without the cooperation of the Maia Zoo. We are grateful to the zoo staff and caregivers for their assistance in enrichment-task preparations and procedures, as well as to all the volunteers and interns for their support. We also wish to thank Prof. Susana Carvalho, Prof. Eugénia Cunha, Dr. Kimberley Hopkins, and Dr. Angela Brandão for their friendship and support. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their many insightful comments.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been supported by personal funds, by funds from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competividad (HAR2012-32548), and by IPRIM, Institut de Recerca i Estudis en Primatologia, Girona, Spain.