You "R/R" What You Eat: Effects of High-Fiber, Low-Starch Diet Change on Regurgitation and Reingestion and Coprophagy in Zoo-Housed Gorillas.

Regurgitation and reingestion (R/R) and coprophagy are common behaviors exhibited by primates living in human care. To reduce this undesirable behavior in two troops of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), the diet was modified by increasing fiber (by increasing browse) and decreasing starch (by reducing but not eliminating biscuits). We monitored behavior before, 3 weeks after, and 1 year after the diet change.

Postoccupancy evaluation of staff, visitors, and three species of animals in a zoo setting.

Postoccupancy evaluation (POE) was used to assess newly constructed zoo exhibits from the perspective of three user groups: zoo staff, zoo visitors, and the animals. Staff represents a generally understudied user group in zoo-based POEs. We asked staff to rate the animals' space, the visitors' space, and the staff's space at previous and new exhibits.

Links between personality traits and problem-solving performance in zebra finches ().

Consistent individual differences in behaviour across time or contexts (i.e. personality types) have been found in many species and have implications for fitness.

Multiple assessments of personality and problem-solving performance in captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana).

Animal personality has been shown to predict many behavioral responses across taxa, but the relationship between personality and performance on cognitive tasks remains unclear. To address this gap, we investigated whether personality predicted problem-solving performance and learning in captive Asian and African savanna elephants. We leveraged 3 novel problem-solving tasks to assess success rate, latency to touch the apparatus, exploratory diversity (the number of different behaviors exhibited toward the task), work time (the proportion of time working on the tasks), and latency to solve.

Performance of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) on a quantity discrimination task is similar to that of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana).

Using an object-choice task, we measured the relative quantity discrimination ability of Asian elephants. Two zoo-housed elephants were given auditory cues of food being dropped into two containers (Nonvisible condition), and in one condition they could also see the food on top of the containers (Visible condition). Elephants received sets of varying ratios and magnitudes.