López-Álvarez Jana, Sanjorge Yaiza, Soloaga Sara, Crailsheim Dietmar, Llorente Miquel
Innovació i Formació, Fundació Universitat de Girona, 17003 Girona, Spain.
Unitat de Recerca i Etologia, Fundació Mona, 17457 Girona, Spain.
Animals (Basel). 2019 Jun 13;9(6):347. doi: 10.3390/ani9060347.
The question of 'if and how captive primates are affected by visitors' has gained increasing attention over the last decades. Although the majority reported undesirable effects on behavior and wellbeing, many studies reported contradicting results. Most of these studies were conducted at zoos, typically with little or no control over visitors' actions. Yet little is known about the impact under very controlled visitor conditions. In order to fill this gap, we conducted this study at a primate sanctuary which allows public access only via a guided visit under strict supervision. We observed 14 chimpanzees, recording their behavior during, after and in the absence of guided visits over a 10-month period. Furthermore, we categorized the visitors regarding group size and composition to see if certain group types would produce a stronger impact on the chimpanzees' behavior. As expected, we found visitors at the sanctuary to produce only a neutral impact on the chimpanzees' behavior, detecting a slight increase of locomotion and decrease of inactivity during visitor activities with chimpanzees demonstrating more interest towards larger sized groups. We argue that the impact has been greatly mitigated by the strict visitor restrictions and care strategies allowing chimpanzees a certain control regarding their visibility.
在过去几十年里，“圈养灵长类动物是否以及如何受到游客影响”这一问题受到了越来越多的关注。尽管大多数研究报告了游客对灵长类动物行为和福祉产生的不良影响，但也有许多研究报告了相互矛盾的结果。这些研究大多在动物园进行，通常对游客行为几乎没有或完全没有控制。然而，在非常受控的游客条件下的影响却鲜为人知。为了填补这一空白，我们在一个灵长类动物保护区开展了这项研究，该保护区仅允许在严格监督下通过导游带领的参观活动让公众进入。我们观察了14只黑猩猩，记录它们在有导游带领参观期间、之后以及没有导游带领参观时的行为，为期10个月。此外，我们根据游客群体的规模和构成对游客进行了分类，以查看某些群体类型是否会对黑猩猩的行为产生更大影响。正如预期的那样，我们发现保护区的游客对黑猩猩的行为只产生了中性影响，在有游客与黑猩猩互动的活动中，观察到黑猩猩的活动量略有增加，不活动时间减少，并且黑猩猩对规模较大的游客群体表现出更大兴趣。我们认为，严格的游客限制和保护策略极大地减轻了这种影响，使黑猩猩在一定程度上能够控制自身的受关注程度。
