Mohr, Tecla http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1790-7288
van de Waal, Erica
Zuberbühler, Klaus
Mercier, Stéphanie
Funding for this research was provided by:
FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (283871)
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (310030_143359, PP00P3_170624)
Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science
University of Lausanne
Article History
Received: 19 October 2022
Revised: 21 February 2023
Accepted: 8 March 2023
First Online: 7 April 2023
Declarations
:
: The authors declare no conflict of interests.
: Our study was approved by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife and the University of Cape Town, South Africa and adhered to the ASAB/ABS guidelines for the use of animals in research (Buchanan et al. CitationRef removed). All animals were well habituated to human observers and could be individually identified. Our experimental manipulation was similar to a large number of related field studies, all based on the notion that simulating natural predator encounters is ethically acceptable, provided it is done within the natural range of experiences (Zuberbühler and Wittig CitationRef removed). For example, when presenting the models, we respected a timeline that corresponded to a natural rate of predator encounters, as recommended for such types of field experiments (Zuberbühler and Wittig 2011). Encountering potentially dangerous animals is part of most animals’ natural lives, suggesting that our model experiments did not impose ethically unacceptable circumstances on our study groups. We recorded no injuries or signs of long-term disturbance during this study. We also noted that, once the predator models were removed from sight, monkeys typically resumed their previous activities very rapidly.
: Not applicable.
: Not applicable.