Owl monkeys' husbandry: an overview of captive management techniques focused on Aotus species

The management of wild species in captive setting, like Zoos or Sanctuaries, has always been challenging both in terms of Animal Welfare and Human Safety. We often find ourselves faced with animals kept in very poor conditions and inadequate environment that don’t allow a life worth living. To avoid this, and promote a safe place in which animals can perform their natural behaviour, is fundamental to establish a list of specific requirements and techniques to enforce, in order to ensure the wellbeing of those animals kept outside their natural habitat. Of course, to do that, the main difficulty is to recreate a balance between the animal nature and the captive environment created for each. In this way the starting point for a good management is setting the needs of a species from which develop a husbandry tailor-made protocol, without forgetting the safety for the personnel working in the facility. The purpose of this thesis is to collect and illustrate the main techniques to be put on practice for the captive management of Owl monkeys. Owl monkeys, commonly named night monkeys, are nocturnal haplorrhine primates belonging to the Genus Aotus, inhabiting the tropical forests of central and South America. They are social animals, with large eyeballs and an excellent olfactory apparatus to move in the dark, widely distributed from Panama to the North of Argentina. According to the species biology and behaviour, the building of adequate enclosures in terms of space and permanent furniture together with the administration of enrichments and appropriate feeding techniques allow to ensure and improve their Welfare in captivity. In addition to the literature review, in this thesis is reported a practical example of applied husbandry techniques and behaviour monitoring of the Owl monkey’s species from Alturas Wildlife Sanctuary in Costa Rica.