Hosey Geoff, Hill Sonya P, Lherbier Mary L
School of Health 8 Social Studies, University of Bolton, Bolton, United Kingdom.
Zoo Biol. 2012 Mar-Apr;31(2):189-96. doi: 10.1002/zoo.20402. Epub 2011 Jun 14.
Most zoos keep comprehensive records, which potentially form a database for use in answering some research questions, such as in veterinary and population management research. They have not, however, been widely used to answer questions about animal behavior and welfare. Here we try to assess the usefulness to behavioral research of two sorts of zoo records (ARKS, the Animal Records Keeping System, and student dissertations held on file) to test the hypothesis that ring-tailed lemurs with a left limb preference experience more negative social lives. We found that, as predicted, lemurs with a left limb preference (LH) received more aggression and were involved in less grooming than nonleft-preferent lemurs (NLH), though the differences were not statistically significant. Contrary to prediction, LH lemurs had fewer reported woundings than NLH lemurs, but again the difference was not statistically significant. We found that the ARKS reports did not contain sufficient quantified and systematic behavioral data for our purposes, although otherwise they provided an excellent context for interpreting results. The student dissertations were also of limited use, primarily because of the small time frame in which they were carried out. Because of these shortcomings we were unable to distinguish whether our inability to find significant effects was due to biological (perhaps hand preference had no consequences for the lemurs) or data reasons. We suggest that closer liaison between zoo research staff, zoo record keepers and academic supervisors could help to improve the usefulness of zoo records for behavioral research.
大多数动物园都保存着全面的记录，这些记录有可能形成一个数据库，用于回答一些研究问题，比如在兽医和种群管理研究方面。然而，它们尚未被广泛用于回答有关动物行为和福利的问题。在此，我们试图评估两种动物园记录（动物记录保存系统ARKS以及存档的学生论文）对行为研究的有用性，以检验“具有左肢偏好的环尾狐猴经历更负面的社交生活”这一假设。我们发现，正如所预测的那样，具有左肢偏好（LH）的狐猴比无左肢偏好的狐猴（NLH）受到更多攻击，且参与的梳理行为更少，尽管差异无统计学意义。与预测相反，LH狐猴报告的受伤情况比NLH狐猴少，但同样差异无统计学意义。我们发现，ARKS报告中没有包含足够的量化且系统的行为数据来满足我们的研究目的，不过在其他方面它们为解释结果提供了很好的背景信息。学生论文的用途也有限，主要是因为其研究的时间框架较短。由于这些不足，我们无法辨别未能发现显著影响是由于生物学原因（也许肢体偏好对狐猴没有影响）还是数据原因。我们建议动物园研究人员、动物园记录保管人员和学术导师之间加强联络，这有助于提高动物园记录对行为研究的有用性。
