Primates: Present food in water (including dishes and ponds)

Overall effectiveness category Unknown effectiveness (limited evidence)
Number of studies: 1
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How is the evidence assessed?

Effectiveness

60%
Certainty

30%
Harms

0%

Calculating overall effectiveness category

Background information and definitions

Food should be presented to primates in a way that encourages their natural food finding behaviour. Introducing new textures stimulates curiosity and interest, with the aim of increasing their activity and foraging behaviours as well as their use of tools to extract the food from the water.

Study locations

Key messages

One replicated, before-and-after study in the USA found that when exposed to water-filled troughs, monkeys were more active and increased their use of tools.

About key messages

Key messages provide a descriptive index to studies we have found that test this intervention.

Studies are not directly comparable or of equal value. When making decisions based on this evidence, you should consider factors such as study size, study design, reported metrics and relevance of the study to your situation, rather than simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation.

Supporting evidence from individual studies

A replicated, before-and-after study in 1993 in the USA (Parks & Novack 1993) found that, when exposed to water-filled troughs, rhesus monkeys Macaca mulatta were more active compared to when troughs of water were absent. On average the number of times exploratory behaviour occurred increased from five, when there was no water trough present, to six when the trough was present, to four once the trough had been removed in two social groups of monkeys. Water was either standing or running and was contained in plastic troughs. For each of the two social groups, behavioural data was collected for 15 days every five minutes between the hours of 09:00 h and 10:00 h for each of the tests where no trough was present, where the trough was present with water and afterwards where no trough was present again. (CJ)
Study and other actions tested
Referenced paper
Parks K.A. & Novak M.A. (1993) Observations of increased activity and tool use in captive rhesus monkeys exposed to troughs of water. American Journal of Primatology, 29, 13-25.

Please cite as:

Jonas, C.S., Timbrell, L.L., Young, F., Petrovan, S.O., Bowkett, A.E. & Smith, R.K. (2020) Management of Captive Animals. Pages 527-553 in: W.J. Sutherland, L.V. Dicks, S.O. Petrovan & R.K. Smith (eds) What Works in Conservation 2020. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.

Where has this evidence come from?

List of journals searched by synopsis

All the journals searched for all synopses

This Action forms part of the Action Synopsis:

Management of Captive Animals

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