Environmental enrichment provides mental stimulation and minimizes abnormal behaviors in captive animals. In captive chimpanzees, individual animals may vary in the ways in which they benefit from enrichment or use enrichment devices, so investigatin...
Visitor effect studies have had inconsistent results, due in part to the inability to control for all confounding variables such as time of day, seasonal weather patterns, and so forth. This study represents the first instance where chimpanzee (Pan t...
Abbreviata caucasica (syn. Physaloptera mordens) has been reported in human and various non-human primates including great apes. The identification of this nematode is seldom performed and relies on egg characterization at the coproscopy, in the abse...
Understanding causes of death allows adjustment of health management strategies for animals in managed care. From 224 documented chimpanzee deaths occurring from 1995 to 2019 in 42 accredited U.S. zoos, post-mortem records and necropsy reports were a...
Numerical chromosomal aberrations in sperm are considered to be a major factor in infertility, early pregnancy loss and syndromes with developmental and cognitive disabilities in mammals, including primates. Despite numerous studies in human and farm...
The behavior of individual animals reflects both internal states and external context. For captive animals, their early life experiences can influence later adjustment, particularly their social competence. In addition, the way in which they are hous...
Wild chimpanzee populations in West Africa (Pan troglodytes verus) have dramatically decreased as a direct consequence of anthropogenic activities and infectious diseases. Little information is currently available on the epidemiology, pathogenic sign...
Ensuring the welfare of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) is crucial, in part because they can act as a conservation resource in the case of wild populations becoming extinct. One strategy often adopted to ensure animal welfare is environmental e...
Tetanus is a life-threatening neurological disease affecting vertebrate species, including primates. Here, we present a case of severe generalized tetanus in a juvenile male chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) that was rescued from the illegal wildlife trad...
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) rescued from the illegal wildlife trade often suffer from chronic, traumatic injuries that require specialized and prolonged medical treatment in wildlife rehabilitation centers. We present the case report of a two-year-...
Cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), and very-low-density lipoproteins (VLDLs) were evaluated in chimpanzees at Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Sierra Leone. Blood from 75 visually healthy chim...
Wild chimpanzees frequently make arboreal nests, while wild lowland gorillas typically nest on the ground. We aimed to understand whether zoo-housed apes’ use of elevated spaces for retiring similarly differed between species and across exhibit...
Locomotion in non-human primates, including walking, climbing, and brachiating among other types of movement (but not pacing), is a species-typical behavior that varies with age, social housing conditions, and environmental factors (e.g., season, foo...
Lavender administration in humans has been shown to promote calmness without the side effects often observed with benzodiazepines. Studies in both humans and rodents have found that ingestion of oral lavender capsules resulted in significantly decrea...
Chimp Haven is a sanctuary for chimpanzees retired from biomedical research, rescued from the pet trade, or re-homed after other organizations could no longer care for them. To provide optimal care for over 300 chimpanzees, Chimp Haven’s animal...
Despite increasing reports of zoonotic simian foamy virus (SFV) infections globally, knowledge of its genetic adaptation in humans and impact on viral transmission and pathogenicity remains limited. We obtained complete SFV genomes using metagenomics...
Wild chimpanzees live in large, mixed-sex groups that display a fission–fusion social organization. To provide a social environment more like that of wild chimpanzees, Chimp Haven integrated smaller groups of 3–4 individuals into one larg...
Negative early experiences can have detrimental effects on social functioning in later life, both in humans as well as in other socially-living animals. In zoo-housed chimpanzees, recent evidence suggests that there may be a lingering signature of ea...
Chimp Haven is a sanctuary for chimpanzees being retired from biomedical research and from facilities that can no longer care for them. Chimpanzees often live in smaller groups in captive settings; however, Chimp Haven integrates them into larger, mo...
Chimpanzees in zoos with sufficient and appropriate environmental enrichment devices are expected to exhibit behaviors, interactions, and societies similar to those in the wild. In this study, we compared the activity budgets of each observed behavio...
Compassion fatigue (CF) refers to the exhaustion and distress caused by the demands of caring for others. CF occurs in a variety of helping professions, including physicians, nurses, educators, social workers and animal caregivers, and is known to ad...
Housing different animal groups in close-by facilities is common in wildlife centers. However, the impact on animal welfare is insufficiently studied in the literature. In this study, we analyzed the behavior of two adjacently housed chimpanzee group...
All four chimpanzee sub-species populations are declining due to multiple factors including human-caused habitat loss. Effective conservation efforts are therefore needed to ensure their long-term survival. Habitat suitability models serve as useful...
Adverse rearing conditions are considered a major factor in the development of abnormal behavior. We investigated the overall levels, the prevalence and the diversity of abnormal behavior of 18 adult former laboratory chimpanzees, who spent about 20 ...
Chimp Haven is a private, nonprofit organization that serves as the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world. The National Institutes of Health supports the federal sanctuary system, which is operated by Chimp Haven, to provide lifetime care for chi...
A survey was sent to zoos, research facilities, and sanctuaries which housed chimpanzees. Data collected included information about 1122 chimpanzees’ age, sex, social group-size, rearing history, and enclosure. Respondents were also asked to in...
This study aimed to construct a composite model of Dyadic Cofeeding Tolerance (DCT) in zoo-housed bonobos and chimpanzees using a validated experimental cofeeding paradigm and to investigate whether components resulting from this model differ between...
In most animals, males are considered more aggressive, in terms of frequency and intensity of aggressive behaviors, than their female peers. However, in several species this widespread male-biased aggression pattern is either extenuated, absent, or e...
Frugivorous primates have developed several strategies to deal with wild fruit scarcity, such as modifying their activity budget or enlarging their diet. Agricultural expansion threatens primate habitats and populations (e.g., disease transmission, a...
Several studies have examined factors that regulate fission–fusion dynamics (FFD) in chimpanzee communities, such as receptive females, predation risks, and food availability. However, the effects of these factors vary between populations. In t...
Chimpanzees used as pets and in the entertainment industry endure detrimental living conditions from early infancy onwards. The preferred option for ending their existence as pet or circus chimpanzees is their rescue and transfer to a primate sanctua...
Predatory behavior in wild chimpanzees and other primates has been well documented over the last 30 years. However, as it is an opportunistic behavior, conditions which may promote such behavior are left up to chance. Until now, predatory behavior am...
Recent efforts to comprehensively characterize great ape genetic diversity using short-read sequencing and single-nucleotide variants have led to important discoveries related to selection within species, demographic history, and lineage-specific tra...
Long-standing, continuous blurring and controversies in the field of phylogenetic interspecies relations, associated with insufficient explanations for dynamics and variability of speeds of evolution in mammals, hint at a crucial missing link. It has...
Despite the essential role of Bifidobacterium in health-promoting gut bacteria in humans, little is known about their functions in wild animals, especially non-human primates. It is difficult to determine in vivo the function of Bifidobacterium in wi...
The conservation status of great apes (chimpanzees Pan troglodytes, gorillas Gorilla sp., orangutans Pongo sp., and bonobos Pan paniscus) is grave and zoological institutions are vital for maintaining numbers of these species and educating the public...
Non-human primate populations act as potential reservoirs for human pathogens, including viruses, bacteria and parasites, which can lead to zoonotic infections. Furthermore, intestinal microorganisms may be pathogenic organisms to both non-human prim...
The Niokolo Koba National Park (NKNP) is the largest protected area in Senegal and lies at the northern limit of the chimpanzee’s range in West Africa. Recent information on nesting behavior and factors influencing nesting behavior is available...
Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) live in flexible fission–fusion societies with frequent changes in both group size and composition. These changes depend mostly on resource availability and individual social preferences yet in captivity are d...
Artificial termite-fishing tasks are a common enrichment for captive great apes, promoting species-typical behaviors. Nonetheless, whether these activities are linked to changes in other behaviors and whether these changes persist over time has seldo...
The possibility of achieving experimentally controlled, non-vocal acoustic production in non-human primates is a key step to enable the testing of a number of hypotheses on primate behavior and cognition. However, no device or solution is currently a...
Several species of amoebae in the genus Entamoeba forming four-nucleated mature cysts are pathogenic, but their identification is challenging due to a lack of distinctive morphological traits. Furthermore, host species cannot reliably be used as a cr...
Effective species conservation management relies on detailed species distribution data. For many species, such as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), distribution data are collected during ground surveys. For chimpanzees, such ground surveys usually focus...
A vital component of small population management in captivity is forecasting future population trends. Until recently, little was known about the demographic structure of the recently retired captive former biomedical research chimpanzee population (...
Primates are some of the most cognitively advanced species held in zoos, and their interactions with visitors are complex. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to understand the impact of zoo visitors on animals, in comparison to &ldqu...
Background/Objectives: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat to human, animal, and environmental health. Among bacteria, E. coli is frequently used as a key indicator of AMR. Despite their genetic proximity to humans, studies on AMR in No...
The attitudes of community members living around protected areas are an important and often overlooked consideration for effective conservation strategies. Around Kibale National Park (KNP) in western Uganda, communities regularly face the threat of...
Gabon harbors one of Africa’s richest assemblages of non-human primates (NHPs), yet integrated national-scale evidence on their conservation status remains limited. To inform conservation strategies, we conducted the first nationwide assessment...
The transforming growth factor beta (TGF-
Different protozoa and metazoa have been detected in great apes, monkeys and humans with possible interspecies exchanges. Some are either nonpathogenic or their detrimental effects on the host are not yet known. Others lead to serious diseases that c...
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