Does group size matter? Captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) behavior as a function of group size and composition.

ABSTRACT: The National Institutes of Health and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums recommend that captive chimpanzees be housed in multi-male, multi-female, age-diverse groups of no less than seven individuals. These recommendations are rooted in the idea that captive chimpanzee groups should be modeled after free-ranging, wild, fission-fusion chimpanzee societies. However, captive chimpanzees do not face the environmental pressures faced by wild chimpanzees, including food scarcity, inter-group competition, and predation. As such, it has been posited that wild, natural conditions may not be the most relevant metric for defining optimal captive chimpanzee group sizes and compositions. Additionally, captive housing poses a set of restrictions on group sizes and compositions, including the need to

SUBMITTER: Neal Webb SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6472487 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature