Primates' behavioural responses to tourists: evidence for a trade-off between potential risks and benefits.

ABSTRACT: The presence of, and interactions with tourists can be both risky and beneficial for wild animals. In wildlife tourism settings, animals often experience elevated rates of aggression from conspecifics, and they may also be threatened or physically aggressed by the tourists themselves. However, tourist provisioning of wild animals provides them with highly desirable foods. In situations of conflicting motivations such as this, animals would be expected to respond using behavioural coping mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated how animals respond to tourist pressure, using wild adult Barbary macaques in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco, as a case study. We found evidence that these animals use a range of different behavioural coping mechanisms-physical avoidance, social support

SUBMITTER: Marechal L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5032226 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature