Primate Project Blogpost #1: Zoo Highlights

During the zoo trip, we were able to see various primates, mostly our own primate(the ring-tailed lemur in my case), and their behaviors that we learned about in class.
The most interesting part of the zoo trip definitely was getting to see your primate's behaviors at their most active time; feeding time. It was more meaningful since I could understand what they were doing, and what each behavior meant. Through experience, I could learn more than just by researching, like some interesting behaviors during feeding, and ways they moved around besides what I found through research.

Aggressive Behavior

As we watched our focal animal feed, I can say that we were all surprised to see that it could be quite aggressive for food. Since lemurs are social animals, I thought that they shared food and told each other where the food was, instead of trying to keep it to themselves. One lemur was drinking from their feeding place, and when another lemur came, it reacted extremely quickly and scared the other lemur away.

I also thought they mostly walked and ran, but I was surprised to see that they jump between branches, ledges using their long hind legs.



What I researched about lemurs was mostly their routines in the wild, but I could still identify some similarities; both arboreal and terrestrial, social groups, and quadrupedalism. Although there were similarities, I could also see differences. The lemurs were, of course, very used to people being near them, so they did not hide or show aggressive behavior. Also, unlike the wild, they did not have much of a territorial boundary. The lemurs share their exhibit area with other animals and various birds, and in the wild, lemurs do not like other troops in their territory. Another thing was that since the area was not to big, group traveling did not and would not have happened, and since they are fed regularly, did not scent mark to remember where food is. In general, a lot survival behavior was not shown in the zoo.