A comparison of time budgets between vervet monkeys in human influenced and non-human influenced areas and a critical review of short-term behavioural studies

The presence of humans has been shown to alter both animal communities and behavior. The change in behavior can be typified as positive (attraction), neutral (habituation) or negative (avoidance). In order to further conservation management research, we set out to study the effect of human presence on the time budgets of vervets in Kruger National Park. Time budgets were analyzed between vervet monkey troops inhabiting three distinct habitat types: the Skukuza rest camp, staff village, and an area of savanna by the lower Sabie River. The three sites varied in degrees of resource and predation pressures, with the tourist camp having the lowest amount of pressure and the wild having the highest. The studies focused on the difference in time spent foraging and vigilant between sites as well as demographics (male, female, juvenile). The study took place over five days, utilizing two observation windows per day (midday and late afternoon). Vervet monkeys were found to be more vigilant in the ‘wild’ setting than in either the staff village or tourist camp. More time was spent foraging in the staff village and wild than in the tourist camp. The congregation of large groups around reliable food sources such as that in the tourist camp can account for the decreased amount of vigilance on a per-individual basis. Through the execution and analysis of the study, it was concluded that behavioral analyses suffer from a number of flaws including inaccurate time sampling, observer bias and subject availability. A literature review and critique was performed in order to find a more reliable form of observation, ideally one suited for short-term studies like those conducted on OTS. We concluded that a scan sample method would be the most reliable form of collecting observational data.