Miller Megan E, Robinson Caeley M, Margulis Susan W
Department of Animal Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY 14208, USA.
Department of Biology, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY 14208, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2021 May 9;11(5):1346. doi: 10.3390/ani11051346.
Research conducted on the effects that zoo visitors have on primate behavior has yielded inconsistent patterns. This study aims to contribute to the growing body of literature regarding visitor effects on zoo-housed primate's activity budgets, with the purpose of quantifying the behavioral variability under two conditions: guest presence and guest absence. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many zoos were closed to the public for varying lengths of time. The Buffalo Zoo was closed to guests for an 18-week period including the summer of 2020, which allowed us to effectively control for zoo guest presence. This case report compares data on the zoo's gorilla troop from the same time period in 2019. We found inconsistent results, similar to prior studies conducted with zoo-housed gorilla troops. Most gorillas were observed foraging less and exhibiting more inactivity in 2020, whereas the adult male silverback showed the opposite pattern. Abnormal or undesirable behaviors were performed less frequently when guests were absent however, these differences were not significant. We encourage others to compare behavior patterns during the pandemic shutdown to add to our knowledge base of visitor effects. We suggest that researchers do not try and generalize their individual and troop results to the entire population of gorillas in managed care, as both intrinsic and extrinsic factors contribute to individual differences in behavioral response.
关于动物园游客对灵长类动物行为影响的研究得出了不一致的模式。本研究旨在为有关游客对圈养在动物园的灵长类动物活动预算影响的文献不断增加做出贡献，目的是量化两种情况下的行为变异性：有游客在场和无游客在场。由于新冠疫情，许多动物园在不同时长内向公众关闭。布法罗动物园在包括2020年夏季在内的18周时间里禁止游客入园，这使我们能够有效控制动物园内游客的存在情况。本病例报告比较了该动物园大猩猩群体在2019年同一时期的数据。我们发现了与之前对圈养在动物园的大猩猩群体进行的研究类似的不一致结果。2020年，大多数大猩猩被观察到觅食减少且活动减少，而成年雄性银背大猩猩则呈现相反的模式。无游客在场时，异常或不良行为的发生频率较低，然而，这些差异并不显著。我们鼓励其他人比较疫情关闭期间的行为模式，以增加我们关于游客影响的知识库。我们建议研究人员不要试图将他们对个体和群体的研究结果推广到所有圈养的大猩猩群体，因为内在和外在因素都会导致行为反应的个体差异。
