Comparative Primate Cognition: Lemurs and Red-tailed Monkeys

Here is the YouTube recording of my project's presentation. :-) Now on to my senior thesis! Hoo boy, wish me luck... 😅

  Ring-tailed lemur participant, Amy Ta-dah! After comparing the data and drawing my conclusions from the results, I created a presentation which I gave live at the Summer Undergraduate Research conference for my university, and then later recorded it for YouTube, which I will include in the next post. I will present the results below: Here we have a side-by-side comparison of the data from Phase One with both the monkeys, and lemurs. Taking into account that the lemurs could likely smell the food in the blue boxes once they got close enough while the monkeys likely could not, these results are pretty much what I would have expected.    Overall, the monkeys visited both colors of boxes less, while the lemurs visited them more. Some of this I account for the increase in the crowned lemurs' participation during Phase Two. I think the most useful data in regards to the participant animals' cognition came from my own observations during the study. Of both the lemurs and the m...

  Red-tailed monkey participants by Steve Gotz Phase Two Data I felt like this project was extremely successful! I accomplished everything I set out to do despite being a one-woman research team (couldn't have done it without the zookeepers of course!) and gathered lots of interesting observations and data. Also it was just plain fun! Who doesn't want to watch cute monkeys and lemurs everyday? I'll relay the data from this phase below:                                   Here the monkeys showed that they definitely favored the blue boxes over the yellow ones! Interestingly however, their interest in the blue boxes waned across the first three days, then spiked on the last day. Their interest in the yellow boxes was increased on the first day of Phase Two compared to the following days, but remained about the same on days two through four. And the data from the lemurs: Remember  to keep...

Female crowned lemur participant Tasherit                                                                                                              Phase Two with the Lemurs Phase Two with the lemurs was similar to Phase Two with the monkeys, however the lemurs seemed even less excited to be receiving the boxes again on Day One than the monkeys haha. ("This again?") However, the three female ring-tailed lemurs were even more bossy toward the subservient male ring-tailed lemur, making sure they got priority with the boxes over him. So they definitely seem more familiar with the fact that the boxes contain food. Just as observed in the red-tailed monkeys, there were lots of instances of the lemurs actively choosing ...

  Red-tailed monkey participant, photo by Steve Gotz Phase Two with the monkeys went great!  The second phase started on June 29th, and on the first day, they were less excited than they were on the first day of Phase Two, but more excited than on the last day of Phase One. All of the blue boxes were opened first, although one yellow one was inspected without opening. There was lots of shredding of the boxes and paper, similar to day one of Phase One. By the end of Phase Two, the monkeys had become very fast and efficient at opening the boxes, and showed much preference for interacting with the blue ones. There was lots of instances of active choosing of a blue box over a yellow, when for instance Ikea monkey came over to a yellow box, looked down at it briefly before running over to a blue box and promptly opening it. In the later days, there was no shredding of the boxes, similar to the pattern seen in Phase One, when it seems they become less excited about the boxes themsel...