Behavior of a group of rhesus macaques in indoor and outdoor enclosures: A comparative study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33910/2687-1270-2023-4-4-450-456Keywords:
rhesus macaque, social behavior, aggressive and friendly behavior, individual behavior, exploratory behavior, locomotor activity, animal welfare, laboratory housing, outdoor enclosuresAbstract
Motor and social restrictions in laboratory conditions significantly alter species-specific behavior in macaques. Natural-like environments provide laboratory macaques with increased social, motor, manipulative, visual, olfactory, and auditory stimulation. We analyzed the behavior of four young rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) aged 24–27 months. They lived in a group of nine individuals of the same age and were maintained in indoor and outdoor enclosures. A 30-minute focal recording of spontaneous behavioral reactions of each individual was carried out during one summer month for a comparative assessment of the characteristics of motor, social and individual behavior of monkeys in two locations. Macaques in the outdoor enclosure showed a significant increase in the locomotor activity, orientation-exploratory reactions and manipulation of objects, while their social behavior decreased in both friendly and aggressive behavioral reactions. In general, individual behavior of macaques predominated over their social behavior in outdoor enclosures, while both types of behavior were evenly represented in indoor enclosures. It has been shown that staying in an outdoor enclosure helps improve the psychological climate in the rhesus macaque group, which indicates a higher reliability of results obtained from experiments with macaques as accessible biological models. The study allows us to better understand the patterns of social behavior in primates.
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