A importância do enriquecimento ambiental para primatas em zoológicos

Abstract

The use of environmental enrichment seeks to offer the animal in captivity conditions that stimulate its natural behavior, through techniques that modify its environment. Based on this, this research aimed to carry out a systematic review on the use of environmental enrichment as a tool to improve the well-being of primates in captivity, describing the types of enrichment, which are more effective and which groups present positive results from the use. of environmental enrichment. A total of 75 articles were evaluated between the years 1988 and 2021. Data were collected in two databases: Web of Science and Scopus, and the following information was extracted: article title, year of publication, place where it was carried out (institution and country), species, genus and family of the primate that received environmental enrichment, type of environmental enrichment applied, subtype of enrichment, the way in which environmental enrichment was employed, effect of environmental enrichment and how it was evaluated (behaviorally and/or physiologically). The results of this research show that in 63.76% of the times when environmental enrichment was applied, the effects were positive. The most used type of enrichment was social, but the one that most achieved positive effects was food enrichment. The most used method to assess these effects was through behavioral measures. Callitrichidae was the family that, proportionally, had the most positive effects on enrichment. And in relation to gender, Eulemur obtained more positive effects. From the results we can conclude that using environmental enrichment actually improves the well-being of primates in captivity, allowing them to perform natural behaviors and improve their well-being. Producing this type of research makes it possible to gather works on the use of enrichment in different zoos, with different families and genders, and to show the most used forms of enrichment, the successes (positive effects) and failures (negative effects). And in this way, build a database to help zoos apply environmental enrichment in their primates.