Dasgupta Dishari, Banerjee Arnab, Karar Rikita, Banerjee Debolina, Mitra Shohini, Sardar Purnendu, Karmakar Srijita, Bhattacharya Aparajita, Ghosh Swastika, Bhattacharjee Pritha, Paul Manabi
Department of Environmental Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
Centre for Mathematical Biology and Ecology, Department of Mathematics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 26;12:649027. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.649027. eCollection 2021.
Urbanization affects concurrent human-animal interactions as a result of altered resource availability and land use pattern, which leads to considerable ecological consequences. While some animals have lost their habitat due to urban encroachment, few of them managed to survive within the urban ecosystem by altering their natural behavioral patterns. The feeding repertoire of folivorous colobines, such as gray langur, largely consists of plant parts. However, these free-ranging langurs tend to be attuned to the processed high-calorie food sources to attain maximum benefits within the concrete jungle having insignificant greenery. Therefore, besides understanding their population dynamics, the effective management of these urbanized, free-ranging, non-human primate populations also depends on their altered feeding habits. Here, we have used a field-based experimental setup that allows gray langurs to choose between processed and unprocessed food options, being independent of any inter-specific conflicts over resources due to food scarcity. The multinomial logit model reveals the choice-based decision-making of these free-ranging gray langurs in an urban settlement of West Bengal, India, where they have not only learned to recognize the human-provisioned processed food items as an alternative food source but also shown a keen interest in it. However, such a mismatch between the generalized feeding behavior of folivorous colobines and their specialized gut physiology reminds us of Liem's paradox and demands considerable scientific attention. While urbanization imposes tremendous survival challenges to these animals, it also opens up for various alternative options for surviving in close proximity to humans which is reflected in this study, and could guide us for the establishment of a sustainable urban ecosystem in the future.
城市化由于资源可用性和土地利用模式的改变，影响着同时发生的人类与动物的互动，这会导致相当严重的生态后果。虽然一些动物因城市扩张而失去了栖息地，但其中少数通过改变其自然行为模式，设法在城市生态系统中存活下来。食叶疣猴（如灰叶猴）的食物种类主要由植物部分组成。然而，这些自由放养的叶猴倾向于适应经过加工的高热量食物来源，以便在绿色植物稀少的混凝土丛林中获取最大利益。因此，除了了解它们的种群动态外，对这些城市化、自由放养的非人类灵长类动物种群的有效管理还取决于它们改变的饮食习惯。在这里，我们使用了一个基于实地的实验装置，让灰叶猴在加工食品和未加工食品之间进行选择，不受因食物短缺而产生的任何种间资源冲突的影响。多项logit模型揭示了这些自由放养的灰叶猴在印度西孟加拉邦一个城市定居点的基于选择的决策过程，在那里它们不仅学会了将人类提供的加工食品作为替代食物来源，而且还表现出了浓厚的兴趣。然而，食叶疣猴的一般进食行为与其特殊的肠道生理之间的这种不匹配让我们想起了利姆悖论，需要引起相当多的科学关注。虽然城市化给这些动物带来了巨大的生存挑战，但它也为它们在靠近人类的地方生存提供了各种替代选择，本研究中就有所体现，这可能会为我们未来建立可持续的城市生态系统提供指导。
