Captivity and habituation to humans raise curiosity in vervet monkeys.

ABSTRACT: The cognitive mechanisms causing intraspecific behavioural differences between wild and captive animals remain poorly understood. Although diminished neophobia, resulting from a safer environment and more "free" time, has been proposed to underlie these differences among settings, less is known about how captivity influences exploration tendency. Here, we refer to the combination of reduced neophobia and increased interest in exploring novelty as "curiosity", which we systematically compared across seven groups of captive and wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) by exposing them to a test battery of eight novel stimuli. In the wild sample, we included both monkeys habituated to human presence and unhabituated individuals filmed using motion-triggered cameras. Results revealed clea

SUBMITTER: Forss SIF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9107434 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature