Activity Budgets of Two Captive White-Handed Gibbon (Hylobates lar) Populations Housed in Different Types of Environments

Housing captive primates in environments representative of their wild habitat in many cases can be challenging. Captive white-handed gibbons can be housed in a caged environment or on an island surrounded by a moat. It has been hypothesized that the quality of the captive environment can affect gibbon behavior, as expressed in (or by) their activity budgets. The researcher observed the activity budgets of captive white-handed gibbons at two Northern California zoos. The captive primates’ activity budgets were compared against those of wild gibbons to gauge similarities or differences between captive and wild animals. Both captive populations’ activity budgets were similar, but varied from those of wild populations, as the captive animals have no need to travel for food. Recreating any wild animal’s habitat in a zoo environment is always going to be a challenge (Hosey 2005). Zoo visitors will sometimes comment on how captive animal exhibits are small or cage-like. There are regulations on animal enclosures and health laid out by United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA 2010) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), though many zoos follow the guidelines of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), which, according to its Web site, are more stringent about animal well-being. The “activity budgets” of animals, or the time an animal devotes to various activities, such as traveling, resting, eating, and socializing, are indicators of the quality of an enclosure. Although it is important for all captive species to have high quality enclosures to live in, the impact of the relatively small enclosures on the activity budgets of two captive white-handed gibbons populations is the focus of this study. The white-handed gibbon, Hylobates lar, is an ape of the family Hylobatidae (Rowe 1996). In the wild, these arboreal, or tree dwelling, primates are found in the deciduous and evergreen rainforests (Roonwal and Mohnot 1977; Rowe 1996) of Northern Sumatra, in parts of Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand (Groves 2001). Within their natural environments, white-handed gibbons live