Foraging in captive hamadryas baboons: implications for enrichment (2004)

Jones, M., Pillay, N.

Abstract

Many animals will work for food even if food is freely available or the animal is satiated, suggesting that foraging behaviour is inherently rewarding and that there is a behavioural need to forage. We investigated whether members of a hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas hamadryas) troop at the Johannesburg Zoo, South Africa would forage in non-provisioned areas of their enclosure when excluded from a high quality, clumped, monopolisable food source by another member of the troop. We studied foraging behaviour during two baseline treatments when enclosures were not altered, and during four experimental treatments in which we introduced either an empty small box (SBE), a small box containing food (SBF), an empty big box (BBE), or a big box containing food (BBF). ... During the SBF treatment, individuals excluded from the device by the dominant male increased foraging elsewhere, without anyconcomitant increase in aggressive behaviour compared with baseline values. In contrast, foraging rates at the device increased during the BBF treatment, as did incidences of aggression. We suggest that the redirected foraging behaviour provided by the SBF treatment could be exploited as a form of environmental enrichment.