Chimpanzees at Wellington Zoo are being encouraged to take a walk on the wild side in a research project designed to foster natural behaviour.
For the next two weeks they will have to work for their snacks, using food dispensers that require the use of simple tools such as twigs and
sticks.
The "feeding enrichment" exercise is part of a study by masters student Melanie Vivian, of Waikato University's animal behaviour and welfare centre.
It will be followed by a two-week "structural enrichment" exercise where chimps will be given hammocks, sacking and tree branches to encourage the nesting behaviour of their wild cousins.
The third stage in the six-week study will bring feeding and structural "enrichment" together to find the combination that best encourages positive behaviour.
Ms Vivian said the programmes were designed to get chimps using their brains more, and in tandem with that to increase their physical activity and decrease their abnormal behaviour.
"It is all about trying to make their time budget resemble slightly more the wild time budget," she said.
"They would spend 70 per cent of the day foraging in the wild."
The project started on Monday and already the results had been positive, with aggressive incidents on the first day.
"Behaviour had changed after one day of feeding enrichment, and there was increased activity.
"There was a definite improvement." from a visitors' perspective, with the increased activity making the chimps more visible throughout the day.
The project fell into line with the zoo's improvement of the chimps' habitat in recent years, said Ms Vivian.
"The first step was to get a more natural environment.
"The next step was giving them something to do in that natural environment," she said.
Primates section head Graeme Strachan said encouraging natural behaviour was a key part of a zoo's work.
"A lot of zoos work on preserving genetic diversity," he said.
"We think we've got to preserve natural behaviour.
" If there is not natural behaviour ... then you're not preserving a species in its true form."
- NZPA
