Primates: Provide live invertebrates

How is the evidence assessed?
  • Effectiveness
    85%
  • Certainty
    50%
  • Harms
    0%

Key messages

  • One before-and-after study in the UK found that when provided with live insect prey inactivity reduced and foraging increased in captive loris to levels seen in wild loris.

 

About key messages

Key messages provide a descriptive index to studies we have found that test this intervention.

Studies are not directly comparable or of equal value. When making decisions based on this evidence, you should consider factors such as study size, study design, reported metrics and relevance of the study to your situation, rather than simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation.

Supporting evidence from individual studies

  1. A before-and-after study in 2015 in the UK (Williams et al. 2015) found that when live insect prey were provided to captive loris Loris lydekkerianus nordicus inactivity was reduced and foraging increased to levels seen in wild lorises. Average inactivity time reduced from an average of 46% to 29% (wild loris averaged 43%) and average foraging time increased from 9% to 24% (wild loris averaged 27%). In addition, a significant increase in postures used in foraging in the wild and a wider behavioural repertoire was seen by recording positional behaviours. Observational data was collected over five consecutive days at five-minute intervals over six hours/day for each of the five animals for each of three conditions: pre-enrichment (usual diet); enrichment (usual diet plus live insects); and post-enrichment (usual diet). Approximately 200 crickets were scattered into an indoor enclosure at 10:00 h over the five days of the enrichment condition (approximately 40 each day) in addition to their normal diet.    (CJ)

    Study and other actions tested
Please cite as:

Jonas, C.S., Timbrell, L.L., Young, F., Petrovan, S.O., Bowkett, A.E. & Smith, R.K. (2020) Management of Captive Animals. Pages 527-553 in: W.J. Sutherland, L.V. Dicks, S.O. Petrovan & R.K. Smith (eds) What Works in Conservation 2020. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.

 

Where has this evidence come from?

List of journals searched by synopsis

All the journals searched for all synopses

Management of Captive Animals

This Action forms part of the Action Synopsis:

Management of Captive Animals
Management of Captive Animals

Management of Captive Animals - Published 2018

Captive Animal Synopsis

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