An Approaching Motor Boat Induces Stress-Related Behaviors in Proboscis Monkeys (Nasalis larvatus) Living in a Riparian Area
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Primate ecotourism is a fast-growing tourism sector that may have a negative effect on wildlife. In riparian areas, tourists can conveniently reach primates via motor boats, but no study has directly examined whether such boats cause stress in primates. Our goal was to test whether the approach of a motor boat induces stress-related and other behaviors in proboscis monkeys ( Nasalis larvatus ), an Endangered species. We studied six one-male, multifemale groups living in a remote riparian area in Sabah, Malaysia, and conducted an experiment by approaching the monkeys in a motor boat by using three conditions with different speeds and travel distances (fast-close, slow-close, and slow-far conditions; 7-8 subjects per condition). For each condition, we compared stress-related behaviors before the boat approach with after the boat started approaching. Feeding, allogrooming and aggression were similarly examined, respectively. We also observed the monkeys’ behaviors at other times to examine age-sex classes differences in vigilance, social proximity, allogrooming, aggression and play (87 subjects). In the experiment, subjects displayed stress-related behaviors for longer in the fast-close and slow-close conditions once the boat started approaching than before the boat approach. The subjects also reduced feeding in the fast-close condition after the boat started approaching. In our observational study, males were more vigilant than females—a behavior that is likely to relate to male-male competition and group protection. This study provides evidence that even a single motor boat moving slowly, with humans behaving calmly, may negatively affect primate behavior and induce stress—an impact that is likely to be larger with tourist boats. Our study also shows that using conditions comparable to the slow-far condition (speed of 3.6 km/hr; no closer than 60 m), where no impact was observed, may help with to develop guidelines for primate tourism in riparian areas. Future research that examines the impact of boats on other primates is needed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".