Animal Sciences Commons^™

Activity Budgets And Behavior Of Captive Black-Handed Spider Monkeys (Ateles Geoffroyi) At The Central Florida Zoo And Botanical Gardens, Stephanie Hargrave

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Establishing baseline activity budgets for zoo-housed captive animals can be important in tracking behavior changes that may indicate medical or other concerns, as well as assessing overall welfare and the need for implementation of interventions such as increased amounts of enrichment. This study sought to calculate activity budgets for the current spider monkeys residing at the Central Florida Zoo, a father-daughter pair of Ateles geoffroyi. Having a baseline activity budget is also valuable because major changes in behavior may accompany the upcoming introduction of new individuals to this particular group of spider monkeys. BORIS behavior coding software was used to …