Moor Macaques (Macaca maura) Remember Earlier Habituation Despite Changes in Group Composition

Abstract

Habituation, in which repeated neutral contacts with human observers lead to reduced, and eventually no, response by primates, is commonly used to study animals in the wild (Williamson & Feistner, 2011). Understanding how habituation affects animal behaviour is important to better evaluate its ethical implications and to improve habituation methods. The time needed to successfully habituate study animals depends on several factors, including their socioecological characteristics, personality, and previous experience with humans (Allan et al., 2020;Williamson & Feistner, 2011). For example, animals that have previously experienced neutral exposure to humans may habituate more quickly than animals that have rarely encountered or have been threatened by humans (Sak et al., 2013;Hernandez-Tienda et al., 2022).Very few empirical data exist concerning whether, or for how long, animals remain habituated when they are not continuously exposed to researchers. If the memory of habituation is long-term, animals should remain habituated after a period with no exposure to researchers. Moreover, when recontacted, animals should show a high proportion of neutral responses and a low distance to researchers if negative exposure to other humans did not attenuate habituation in the meantime (Prediction Bonaventura Majolo and Federica Amici contributed equally to this work.