Animal ambassador programs are increasingly prevalent in zoos, yet few studies have investigated their impact on animal welfare. We assessed the effects of an ambassador program on the behavior of a colony (N = 15) of zoo-housed African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) and evaluated whether individual characteristics were predictive of participation. Behavioral data were collected for 16 weeks and included 43 “penguin encounters”, during which zoo visitors entered a designated portion of the penguins’ enclosure. When comparing colony behavior following encounters to behavior during a matched control period lacking an encounter, we found no significant difference between affiliative or aggressive behaviors, suggesting that the encounters did not disrupt interactions in the colony. The same was true when comparing behavior preceding the encounter to a matched control period, indicating that any anticipatory period was similarly non-disruptive. Space use during encounters suggested comfort near visitors. We also measured penguin temperament on the shy-bold continuum by recording the birds’ response to novel objects and found that penguins’ temperament, sex, and age were predictive of participation. We concluded that this program had a neutral or positive impact on penguin welfare and considered the findings in relation to aspects of the ambassador program that provided penguins with control over their involvement.

Objectives Natural history collections are often thought to represent environments in a pristine natural state—free from human intervention—the so‐called “wild.” In this study, we aim to assess the level of human influence represented by natural history collections of wild‐collected primates over 120 years at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Materials and Methods Our sample consisted of 875 catarrhine primate specimens in NMNH collections, representing 13 genera collected in 39 countries from 1882 to 2004. Using archival and accession information we determined the approximate locations from which specimens were collected. We then plotted location coordinates onto publicly available anthrome maps created by Ellis et al. (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2010, 19, 589), which delineate terrestrial biomes of human population density and land use worldwide since the 1700s. Results We found that among primates collected from their native ranges, 92% were from an environment that had some level of human impact, suggesting that the majority of presumed wild‐collected primate specimens lived in an environment influenced by humans during their lifetimes. Discussion The degree to which human‐modified environments may have impacted the lives of primates currently held in museum collections has been historically ignored, implicating unforeseen consequences for collection‐based research. While unique effects related to commensalism with humans remain understudied, effects currently attributed to natural phenomena may, in fact, be related to anthropogenic pressures on unmanaged populations of primates.

Stillbirths, or births of infants that died in the womb, represent a failure of the materno-feto-placental unit to maintain a suitable fetal environment. Typical studies of nonhuman primate (NHP) stillbirth patterns are primarily descriptive and focus on macaques (genus Macaca). Thus, less is known about other NHP species and rarer still are studies that examine possible biological factors that influence stillbirth rates across taxa. To examine possible contributors to stillbirths in great apes, we analyzed 36 years (1980-2016) of historical data documenting births of zoo-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, N = 391), western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla, N = 491), and orangutans (Pongo spp, N = 307) in accredited zoological parks in the United States. The average number of births for each of the 446 mothers was 2.7, resulting in a total of 1,189 births with 143 stillbirths (12%). Stillbirths represented 12% of chimpanzee births, 13% of gorilla births, and 10% of orangutan births. We used generalized linear mixed-effects models to assess possible relationships between stillbirth likelihood and mother origin (wild- versus captive-born), age, and genus. Across taxa, older mothers were more likely to have a stillbirth (p = 0.004). While these results are likely influenced by both biological and management-related factors (e.g., selective captive breeding), they may be useful to population managers in evaluating pregnancy risks for great apes. Captive settings and archival studbook data such as these may provide a unique opportunity to further explore this topic.