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Species: Gorilla

Use: Effects of change in accommodation

Authors: R. A. Bowen

Methods: Scan

Publications/Presentations: R. A. Bowen (1980). The behavior of three hand-reared lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) with emphasis on the response to a change in accommodation. Dodo R. Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, 17, 63:79.

Resting: Lying, sitting, standing, clinging and hanging, except when accompanied by any other behavior; thus leaving only those occasions on which the animal was sedentary in both gross and local terms (apart from visual behavior or gestures)

Gross locomotion: Walking, running, climbing, brachiating, swinging, rolling, and wrestling.

Local manipulation: Manipulating with hands or feet, mouthing, scratching, hair-plucking, grooming, nose-picking, coprophagy, drinking water or urine, foraging, feeding, and mauling (gentle wrestling).

Social play: Wrestling, mauling, sparring, chasing and social grooming.

Self-directed: Grooming, scratching, plucking hair and nose-picking.

Visual: Watching, looking at, and glancing at one another.

Gestures: Including facial expressions (play face and fear grin), playing-walking/running, tapping and slapping objects/substrate, chest beating and patting parts of the body.

Public-oriented: Watching or interacting with members of the public, by throwing items of food or play objects, for example.

Feeding: Eating, drinking, foraging for food, coprophagy and drinking urine.

Stereotyped: ÔRockingÕ and ÔshufflingÕ. These are behavioral abnormalities peculiar to captivity in which the animal sits, sometimes holding a quantity of wood-wool or similar nesting material, and either rocks back and forth with it in a sort of scrubbing motion, or shuffles backwards with it, using the hands placed on the surface in front as a means of propulsion.