With the goal of finding a practical way to improve and/or maintain the body condition of overweight chimpanzees to promote health and welfare, several feeding protocols’ effects on chimpanzee body condition scores (BCS) were evaluated...
Environmental enrichment enhances the psychological well‐being of animals and is therefore a vital part of the husbandry of captive animals. Since chimpanzees are a cognitively complex species, they may especially benefit from enrichment programs that...
Training nonhuman primates (NHPs) to perform cognitive tasks is essential for many neuroscientific investigations, yet laboratory training is a time-consuming process with inherent limitations. Habituating NHPs to the laboratory staff and experimental equipment can take...
Over evolutionary time, light from the sun, moon, and stars has provided organisms with reliable information about the passage of time; but modern artificial lighting has drastically altered these cues. Evidence is accumulating that exposure...
All non-human great apes are endangered, and for these animals, captive individuals play an important role in the species’ conservation management plan. Therefore, information about their current enrichment activities is essential for maintaining a healthy...
Facilities housing captive animals are full of staff who, every day, interact with the animals under their care. The expertise and familiarity of staff can be used to monitor animal welfare by means of questionnaires...
Play is sometimes considered as an indicator of positive animal welfare. However, it is not yet sufficiently understood whether or not social play among adults can be considered as such an indicator because it is...
Abnormal behavior occurs in a number of captive nonhuman primate species and is often used as an indicator of welfare. However, reported levels of abnormal behavior often vary across species, making general welfare judgments difficult...
More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the Animal Welfare Act mandated that research facilities develop and follow a plan to promote the psychological well-being of captive primates. Since passage of this...
Monkeys first arrived in the Comparative Biology Centre (CBC) at Newcastle University in 2000. They were housed in three small separate units consisting of steel and wooden cages. In 2011 a decision was made to...