This project investigates how rhesus monkeys born and raised under different laboratory conditions adapt to placement into naturalistic outdoor environments and compares this adaptation process to that seen in natural settings and in indoor environments that contain specific physical and social features of the monkeys' natural habitat. Adaptation, both short- and long-term, is assessed by examining behavioral repertoires and by monitoring a variety of physiological systems in these subjects, yielding broad- based indices of relative physical and psychological well-being. The project centers on longitudinal study of a group of 15-year- old rhesus monkeys and 2 generations of their progeny, all of whom live year-round in a 5-acre outdoor enclosure on the grounds of the NIHAC. Despite the facts that the 15-year-old adults were all laboratory born and hand-reared in a nursery, and that these adults and their progeny have never had physical exposure to any other monkeys, all members of this primary study group consistently exhibit the full compliment of species-normative behavioral repertoires, development patterns, seasonal changes (including well-defined breeding and birth seasons), and social organization. During FY88 these species-normative patterns continued to be documented in the primary study group, and comparisons with a second multigenerational group of laboratory-born rhesus monkeys maintained in indoor settings over a comparable period were initiated. The process of adolescent male emigration was also examined in detail in the primary study group and compared with the phenomenon as observed in wild-living rhesus monkey troops. Finally, two studies investigating the effects of differing forms of "enrichment" of the physical environment on behavioral and physiological processes displayed by member of captive monkey groups were begun following the completion of construction of new indoor-outdoor facilities.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter