Propping for geriatric primates

Hello, my name is Sean, and I’m a member of the Small Primate Care Team. Have you heard of the term propping? For animal care professionals, “propping” refers to the furniture within a habitat or behind-the-scenes indoor night area, including branches, ropes, hammocks, etc.

We try to re-prop once or twice a year to create new pathways for the primates to utilize while moving through their environments; re-propping is one of the best forms of enrichment. When re-propping, the main three factors we consider are safety, natural locomotion, and accommodation of the needs of individuals. Safety is the most important factor; we must make sure we’re eliminating the risk of pinching or constricting, and props must be securely attached. Natural locomotion, or the way an animal moves itself from one place to another – including walking, climbing, jumping, crawling, swimming, flying, and brachiating – is another factor to consider when propping. For example, our sloths aren’t jumping from prop to prop, so the pathways must be connected or within the sloths’ reach, whereas our Schmidt’s guenons will jump from prop to prop, allowing there to be greater distance between props.

The third factor which we’ve been focused on recently is accommodating for our geriatric drills and colobus. All of our drills and three of our colobus monkeys are considered geriatric for their species. We’ve noticed some signs of discomfort when locomoting, mainly when climbing on angled props. One of our solutions to ease this discomfort is to provide wider props at a more gradual incline. In the past few months, we’ve added several large props up to platforms and rockwork on both of our small African primate habitats. In their behind-the-scenes indoor night areas, we’ve added heavy duty metal staircases like the one pictured, built by our Facilities Team, to help them get from the ground to the shelves with ease. We’ve observed a lot less discomfort in our geriatric animals since adding these new props, and we will continue adding props to accommodate for their needs in the future.

(Photo: Jodi C.)

Sean L.
Small Primate Team