Primates: Change feeding times

Overall effectiveness category Likely to be beneficial
Number of studies: 1
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How is the evidence assessed?

Effectiveness

70%
Certainty

50%
Harms

0%

Calculating overall effectiveness category

Background information and definitions

Anticipating the arrival of food can lead to stress behaviours in captive animals. Changing the times when feeds are given to captive primates throughout the day reduces the predictability of feeds with the aim of increasing the amount of time animals spend foraging for foods by decreasing stress behaviours.

Key messages

One replicated, controlled study in the USA found that when chimpanzees were fed on unpredictable schedules inactivity decreased.

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

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

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This Action forms part of the Action Synopsis:

Management of Captive Animals

Related Actions

Actions	Effectiveness	Studies	Category
Primates: Change the number of feeds per day Action Link	Trade-off between benefit and harms	2	Synopsis Link
Primates: Provide food at natural (wild) feeding times Action Link	No evidence found (no assessment)	0	Synopsis Link
Primates: Change feeding times Action Link	Likely to be beneficial	1	Synopsis Link