Morimura / Poster

Training for the environmental enrichment.

Naruki Morimura, Kouki Huwa, & Gen'ich Idani
Great Ape Resaerch Institute, Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences

     In the future, our museum aims to display the various behaviors of living chimpanzees for the exhibition of human evolution. We started by raising four chimpanzee's infants aged from two to three years old since January 1999. However it is needed more naturalistic environment to enhance the development of physical and mental aspects and the psychological well-being in daily life. Making a larger and more complex animal's enclosure by environmental enrichment could be beneficial to the animals. The animals will have the chance to be more freely active in their enclosure.
     Nevertheless, if caretaker and/or researcher could not control their animals, such an enclosure should leave wounded animals without any medical treatment, and allow some animals to reproduce without any restriction. In order to accomplish the environmental enrichment, the training for animals based on the operant conditioning is essential, and the good relationships between animals and humans are also inevitable. Furthermore, it has recently been discussed the importance of good relationships between animals and humans to enhance the positive results of the environmental enrichment. This paper focuses on the progress of chimpanzee's training describing on the changes of the relationships between chimpanzees and humans. The effectiveness of training on enriching the social aspects of animals is also examined.