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Urine washing in urban robust capuchin monkeys (Sapajus sp.): The relation with visitors.
Reyes, Patricio D; Baldovino, María Celia; Aguiar, Lucas M.
Affiliation
  • Reyes PD; IADIZA-CONICET, Av. Ruiz Leal s/n, Parque General San Martín, Mendoza, Argentina.
  • Baldovino MC; Instituto de Biología Subtropical-CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Misiones, Puerto Iguazú, Argentina.
  • Aguiar LM; Asociación Civil Centro de Investigaciones del Bosque Atlántico, Puerto Iguazú, Argentina.
Am J Primatol ; 84(7): e23381, 2022 07.
Article in En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35389525
In primates, urine washing (UW) is a behavior in which individuals intentionally deposit urine on their bodies. Social and nonsocial hypotheses have been proposed to explain the adaptive function of this behavior. For capuchins, different functions have been assigned for UW, suggesting it as a flexible behavior, but studies have been mainly in captivity. However, no investigations have been performed in urban environments, where these animals can modify their behavior. Our goal was to study UW in a semi-provisioned group of an introduced unknown robust capuchin species (Sapajus sp.) living in a tiny urban fragment in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, where they have contact with humans. We assessed the influence of social (sexual, agonistic, and anointing behaviors) and environmental (temperature, relative air humidity, height of the monkeys in the trees, number of people present in the fragment, and human-monkey interactions) variables, the influence of behavior before and after UW, and the influence of sex-age classes, on the frequency of UW. We observed 75 records of UW in 300 h of observations, where urine was mostly deposited on hands and passed on to feet (95%). There were no significant differences in the frequency of the behavior between sex-age classes nor in the behaviors before and after UW. Around 50% of UW took place in the late morning and we found no correlation between UW and temperature, relative air humidity, nor the heights of the monkeys in the trees. However, we found a significant association between UW and the daily number of people in the fragment, but not between UW and human-monkey interactions, anointing, agonisms, and sexual behavior. Our study increases the scope of UW flexibility by identifying the presence of visitors affecting the occurrence of this behavior. We discussed different possibilities through which people could influence the capuchins to display UW.
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Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Cebus / Sapajus Type of study: Prognostic_studies Limits: Animals / Humans Country/Region as subject: America do sul / Brasil Language: En Journal: Am J Primatol Year: 2022 Document type: Article Affiliation country: Argentina Country of publication: United States

Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Main subject: Cebus / Sapajus Type of study: Prognostic_studies Limits: Animals / Humans Country/Region as subject: America do sul / Brasil Language: En Journal: Am J Primatol Year: 2022 Document type: Article Affiliation country: Argentina Country of publication: United States