A collaboration between the Philadelphia Zoo and Penn Anthropology, this project aims to assist the zoo in collecting data on their primates for purposes of welfare, research, and  conservation, but also allows undergraduates at Penn to practice their skills employing the scientific method,

"Socio- and cognitive ecology of zoologically-housed western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): Spacing and behavior as a function of resource distribution”

Endocrinology is at the forefront of animal welfare assessment in many contexts, but especially as it relates to the care and management of animals in human care (Narayan, 2019). Together with veterinarian Dr. Christina Watts (https://www.tcvetserv.com/) and Shooting Star Alpaca Farm owner Ann Baldwin (Montrose, PA), I am conducting a study to answer a few questions about alpaca cognition and welfare during shearing - a particularly stressful (but necessary) annual event"

• Do alpacas anticipate shearing? 

• How stressful IS shearing? (how high does cortisol spike?)

• Do gelded alpacas cope with stress better than intact alpacas?

• How does this information support the management and welfare of alpacas?

Wild, habitual tool use is a behavior shared between all hominins and a select few extant non-human primate species. There have been many attempts to find a theory explaining the emergence of tool use, yet no current theory exists (Fragaszy & Liu, 2012). In this endeavor, Teschke and colleagues (2013) have advocated for the exploration of specific characteristics that may constrain or prompt tool use across species; persistence may be one of these characteristics.