Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The red ruffed lemur is endemic to Madagascar and classifies as a critically endangered species. It naturally lives in the canopy of the rainforest and is the most frugivorous lemur of Madagascar. Suspensory feeding postures are common to enable harvesting from small branches.

Because environmental enrichments can lead to a higher welfare for the animals the purpose of this study was to evaluate two new feeding enrichments for the two red ruffed lemurs at Furuviksparken. The enrichments were constructed so that the lemurs were forced to hold a suspended feeding posture while foraging. One of the enrichments was made of a plastic ball with holes containing their food and the other was a shelf with food on a metal stick. Both the enrichments were placed under a branch. The first part of the method included a video camera to study the lemurs 24 hours for six days. The camera part showed that the ball was a more successful enrichment than the shelf because they quickly learned how to sit on the shelf and consume the food whereby the shelf has lost its purpose as an enrichment. Part two of the method consisted of observations of the feeding ball to evaluate their activity level before and after access to the feeding ball. Observations were made during six days, three days with the ball and three control days. The observation method that were used was time sampling with instantaneous sampling with one-minute intervals.

The results showed that the activity level after the enrichment was placed in the enclosure increased on the enrichment days. The red ruffed lemurs had a higher level of moving behaviors and less resting behaviors when they had access to the enrichment compared to the hour before. When only comparing the movement during the control days with the enrichment days the movement did not rise. This could be due to the small amount of observation days, but in total the activity level raised during the enrichment days.

In conclusion this study shows that the red ruffed lemurs did use both the enrichments but only the plastic feeding ball increased their activity level. There was a clear difference between the male and the female regarding the use of the enrichment and there are many factors that could have affected the results.