Sofia Ingrid Fredrika Forss

Climate change and human impacts on the natural world make it increasingly more important for animal species to flexible adapt to new circumstances and exploit novel resources. Food choice is a crucial aspect of a species adaptability to changing environments, and can be highly influenced by factors like neophobia and exploration tendencies. Curiosity composed of both the ability to overcome neophobia and the motivation to explore can arguably underly if a species can thrive in anthropomorphic environments. Vervet monkeys are generalist feeders and have radiated well into human environments across Africa. This project explored which conditions elicit curiosity in vervet monkeys and tested the effects of habitat risk in two different habitats: natural savannah and a sanctuary. Our findings show that monkeys that grew up in the low-risk environment of the sanctuary were more curios than the monkeys in their natural habitat. Besides, the effect of habitat risk we could identify a gradual variation in curiosity towards novel foods and objects according to how well the monkeys were habituated to humans. Unhabituated wild groups avoided novel items almost completely, whilst groups that had over years been observed by researchers were more curious the stronger their habituation to humans were.