The many benefits of behavioral observations

Hi, it’s Caroline from the Small Primate Team. I want to talk to you about one of my favorite things I get to do as an animal care professional, and that’s behavioral observations.  

Behavioral observations are the process of observing an animal and then recording those observations for later use. A portion of a keeper’s day is spent away from the animals, either cleaning or preparing enrichment and diets for them for later. So, getting to perform observations that we can then use to help improve the lives of the animals or to help us diagnose issues is an extremely valuable use of time and opportunity for both our team and the animals.  

We conduct both informal and formal observations of the animals throughout the day. Informal observations happen at random times every day. Whenever you see a keeper stop and watch an animal for a few minutes, they’re likely performing an informal behavioral observation on that animal. This is one of the ways we monitor aspects of the animals’ lives such as how juveniles are developing; how social dynamics in the group are working; and if animals are following their expected behavior patterns.  

On the other hand, with formal observations, there are many ways to do this. The method we on the Small Primate Team use is instantaneous sampling.  In instantaneous sampling, we record what an animal is doing every 30 seconds for 15 minutes from a pre-determined list of behaviors called an ethogram. Some of the behaviors we look for are foraging or looking for food; social grooming; and resting. Ethograms can include hundreds of behaviors, although the majority of our ethograms contain 20 to 30 behaviors that we see our animals engage in reliably. This allows all keepers to collect data in the same way, leading to less inter-observer reliability issues. This more formally collected data is important information for our welfare team, as it allows us to collect activity budgets of the animals that are used to better assess their welfare and to determine if our enrichment program is fulfilling its goal of encouraging natural behaviors.  

Lastly, behavioral observations are a positive for us because they allow us to watch the animals we care for, learn more about their behaviors, and spend some time enjoying watching them interact with enrichment or each other.  

Caroline S. 
Small Primate Team