Zoos are places where primates meet: How knowledge about others affects intersecting perceptions between nonhuman primates and humans? – PRIMAZOO

The PRIMAZOO project is made up of six tasks, enabling the building of the logistical resources (tasks 0 and 1) needed to implement, on the one hand, an interdisciplinary approach in which monkeys and visitors are studied ‘in mirror’ via perception tests (task 2) and observations of spontaneous interactions (task 3) or interactions surrounded by mediation activities (task 5) and, on the other hand, a purely anthropological approach enabling a better understanding of the links between knowledge and perceptions by probing the representations underlying visitors' actions (tasks 4 and 5), a purely anthropological approach to better understand the links between knowledge and perceptions by probing the representations underlying visitors' actions (tasks 4 and 5).

- Task 1 involves adapting pre-existing infrastructures in two zoos: La Menagerie, the zoo of the Jardin des Plantes (MNHN, Paris) and a private zoo (confidential identity as provided for in a partnership charter signed with this company).

- Task 2 assesses interspecific understanding of communication signals. Visitors are invited to scan a QR code with their smartphone to access a web page offering a quiz in which they have to indicate the supposed meaning of the monkeys' mimics. At the same time, the monkeys were exposed to a touch screen, fixed to the railings of their enclosure, which displayed photos/videos of human expressions that they had to match by touching them in order to obtain a treat.

- Task 3 analyses the interactions between monkeys and visitors using an innovative approach based on ethological and ethnographic methods. Prior to the systematic collection of data, the behaviour of the monkeys and visitors was recorded in an ethogram of gestures, and the words spoken by the visitors are being categorised.

- Task 4 looks at how these interactions can be influenced by visitors' participation in new pre-existing scientific mediation activities.

- Task 5, which is a cross-cutting task, uses the methods employed in tasks 2, 3 and 4 to study whether visitors' attitudes towards monkeys are linked to their knowledge of these animals, in particular the knowledge acquired during the mediation activities created as part of task 1, which are available in different forms, each offering three increasing levels of complexity (informative, interactive, participative) in order to vary visitor involvement.

The PRIMAZOO project has been enriched by several collaborations to facilitate its implementation. Firstly, a fruitful collaboration with the educational departments of the partner private zoo has led to the creation of new mediation activities in three forms: display panels, presentations by guides and a website accessible on smartphones. Each of the methods offers three levels of increasing complexity, so as to vary the level of involvement of visitors: the first level is informative, presenting photos of monkey mimics and the labels used in ethology to describe them; the second level is interactive, asking visitors to match photos of each of these mimics with the corresponding label from among several proposed labels; and the final level is participatory, guiding visitors in observing the mimics, likely to be performed in real time by monkeys in the vicinity, by following an ethological protocol for a few minutes. A collaboration with the Mosaic service unit (MNHN and Sorbonne Université) has completed this set-up to enable the deployment of activities accessible on smartphones from a website. A larger-scale project has emerged from this collaboration, temporarily entitled "Animal Connect", which aims to offer a participatory science program to involve zoo visitors in collecting data on animal behaviour; 20 zoos and 15 ethology researchers are currently involved. These developments further anchor the PRIMAZOO project in the concept of 'action research'.

Secondly, collaboration with the LSCP (ENS/CNRS) has led to the development of a cognitive test device for non-human primates that is easy to use in zoos because it can be removed and takes up very little space. The device consists of a metal box that can be fixed to any type of wire mesh and contains a touch screen, a reward dispenser and a camera.

Thirdly, the supervision of eight intern students, followed by the recruitment of a post-doctoral researcher in anthropology and an engineer in ethology, made it possible to draw up several protocols for observing interactions between monkeys and visitors, and then to systematise data collection in an interdisciplinary approach. Initial observations have shown an effect of the number and agitation of visitors on the occupation of enclosures and the activities of the monkeys, in several species of non-human primates. At the same time, an effect of monkey behaviour on visitor attitudes has also been demonstrated: the more active the monkeys, the more time visitors, and in particular families, spend in front of the enclosures, trying to interact with the monkeys and talking about the monkeys among themselves; this effect is even more marked when the monkeys are feeding or socialising with each other and with the visitors.

The PRIMAZOO project, because it is based on tools derived from the biological and social sciences, has multiple scientific and societal implications. The project helps to increase scientific knowledge of human-animal relations, as it aims to better characterise interactions between non-human primates and humans using an innovative multi-species, interdisciplinary approach. The project also sheds new light on the potential effects of captivity on the behaviour of wild animals, providing a more accurate picture of the welfare of zoo primates. In addition, the project is evaluating the contribution that citizen science can make, as an educational medium, to raising public awareness of animal behaviour and, more broadly, of environmental issues.

Finally, the PRIMAZOO project is part of the vast field of artificial intelligence research as a fourth form of scientific mediation will complete the range of mediation activities proposed at the end of the project: an artificial intelligence trained to assist visitors in real time (MicMac translator), developed in partnership with the research units PRISME specialising in computer vision (University of Orléans) and LAPSCO specialising in cognitive sciences (Université Clermont Auvergne and CNRS), thanks to support from the Centre Val de Loire region. By documenting the way in which the public will or will not appropriate this tool, the PRIMAZOO project will be a vector of information concerning the use of machines in an educational context.

The project has already been presented at four scientific conferences organised respectively by young researchers at the MNHN, the Société Francophone de Primatologie, the Société Française pour l'Etude du Comportement Animal and the University of Brighton. The project coordinator was also invited to highlight the project's objectives at a workshop organised by the Paris School of Economics on the notion of multi-species welfare. Finally, the interdisciplinary dimension of the project was the subject of a paper presented at a conference on the ethnography of participatory research organised by the University of Lyon II. Two communications will soon be given at the conference of the Société Francophone de Primatologie, to be held at the University of Toulouse III, one presenting the new mediation activities developed as part of the project, and the other discussing the originality of the approach developed to jointly analyse the behaviour and comments of visitors during their encounters with the monkeys, at the crossroads of ethology and ethnography. Finally, a master's thesis in anthropology (MNHN, M2 Cultural Diversity and Biological Diversity) is currently being prepared, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the issues involved in visiting the zoo, between colonial legacies, conservation programmes and interspecific encounters.

Human societies are interacting with a growing number of nonhuman animal species, including exotic species during visits to zoological parks. And yet, the existence of zoos remains polemical, despite their increasing contribution to biodiversity conservation, because of ethical issues of maintaining wild animals in captivity. Few studies however assessed whether the behaviour and attitude of visitors influence zoo animals, especially nonhuman primates that are so closely related to humans. Besides, humans often lack ability to correctly perceive the emotional state of nonhuman animals, our representations of specific animal species being biologically and culturally driven. This is thus crucial for zoos to understand how captive nonhuman primates and human visitors perceive each other and to identify and promote pedagogic tools that could improve public perceptions.

The PRIMAZOO project proposes to develop an integrative approach to study intersecting perceptions and representations underpinning human-animal interactions in zoos. We will mobilize theoretical and methodological concepts from both biological sciences and social sciences and humanities, to understand (i) how nonhuman primates and humans perceive each other according to a variety of individual and environmental factors and (ii) how human visitors represent nonhuman primates and their captivity, depending on their participation in interactive zoo mediation displaying citizen science.
The principal investigator, Audrey Maille, and her pluri-disciplinary team composed of 18 collaborators (including 5 persons hired for the project), will carry out five research tasks and one coordination task to achieve the aims of the PRIMAZOO project. TASK 1 will consist of adapting existing infrastructures at Haute-Touche Zoological Reserve (MNHN, Indre), in order to accommodate studies on macaques (Macaca tonkeana) and visitors in the first zoo-based Primate Study Centre to be established in a public zoo being part of a national research institution. TASK 2 will assess whether macaques and humans are able to attribute emotions to members of the other species by processing multimodal cues, such as facial expressions, body postures or vocalizations. TASK 3 will evaluate how the behaviour of one species affects the behaviour of the other species when interacting during zoo visits. TASK 4 will investigate whether participation in zoo mediation displaying citizen science influences those intersecting perceptions and the visitors’ representations of nonhuman primates. Finally, the transversal TASK 5, will study how behaviours and attitudes of human participants toward macaques are affected by knowledge and representations about zoo primates.

The PRIMAZOO project, will contribute to improve scientific knowledge about the human-environment interactions as it aims to better characterize the relationships between human and nonhuman primates in a zoo setting through an innovative and holistic approach of animal captivity. This project has the potential to provide new insights on the putative effects of captivity on behaviour of primates, increasing our understanding of primate welfare in zoological parks. This project should also provide scientific tools from life and social sciences for evaluating the influence of environmental education developed in zoo settings on public engagement with zoos as actors of biodiversity conservation, and more generally with environmental issues. The PRIMAZOO project will thus have both scientific and societal implications, in helping to guide the decision-making process in the zoo community.