Apex and ApeTouch: Development of a Portable Touchscreen System and Software for Primates at Zoos

Creators: Martin, Christopher Flynn; Muramatsu, Akiho; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

Abstract

We report on the development and testing of a portable touchscreen apparatus and accompanying software program for primate enrichment, cognitive research, and husbandry applications. For zoos considering using technology to bolster scientific efforts or enhance the welfare of primates in their care, touchscreen activities offer a solution that has a long and proven record of primate use in laboratory settings as well as a history of usage in the zoo world. We review the options that are available for zoos to build their own touchscreen systems and we offer as an alternative our pre-built apparatus, Apex, and primate software suite, ApeTouch, both of which are tailored for use in a zoo setting. The efficacy and utility of these tools are demonstrated in a training study with four macaque groups of different species that were previously naïve to touchscreens. All of the groups in the study learned to use the device and displayed a consistent engagement with the touchscreen tasks over 95 daily sessions of exposure. In the final stage of the training, two of the four groups displayed an above-chance level performance on a numerical sequencing task.

Additional Information

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Received: 22 May 2022 / Revised: 24 June 2022 / Accepted: 25 June 2022 / Published: 28 June 2022. (This article belongs to the Special Issue The Use of New Technology to Enhance Animal Welfare). This study was conducted as collaborative research of the Japan Monkey Centre (2018019, 2019013, and 2020020). We gratefully acknowledge the Japan Monkey Centre for accommodating our study and we thank the following staff members there: Takashi Funahashi, Mari Hirosawa, Tomonori Hoshino, Ryosuke Ichihara, Yoshihiro Kagami, Kei Nemoto, Kosuke Takeda, Momoka Ukise, and Masaya Yamada as well as General Director Gen'ichi Idani, Academic Section Director Misato Hayashi, and Curator Yuta Shintaku. We thank Lydia Hopper, Steve Ross, and the team at the Fisher Center of Lincoln Park Zoo for their early adoption, design guidance, and testing of many of the ApeTouch tasks. We are also grateful to Ikuma Adachi and the staff and students of the Language and Intelligence Section, Kyoto University Primate Research Institute, who helped to conceive of and discuss the possibilities for a portable touchscreen apparatus and its potential applications. A.M. was financially supported by a grant from Kitano Foundation of Lifelong Integrated Education. T.M. was funded by a grant from Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Studies, MEXT-JSPS (#16H06283) and LGP-U04 as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Core-to-Core Program CCSN. The expense of the Apex apparatus used in the macaque training study at the Japan Monkey Centre was covered by T.M. Author Contributions. Conceptualization, C.F.M., A.M. and T.M.; methodology, C.F.M., A.M. and T.M.; software, C.F.M.; formal analysis, C.F.M. and A.M.; investigation, A.M.; data curation, A.M.; writing—original draft preparation, C.F.M., A.M. and T.M.; writing—review and editing, C.F.M., A.M. and T.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Institutional Review Board Statement. This study was approved by the ethics committee of the Japan Monkey Centre (Collaborative Research of Japan Monkey Centre: 2018019, 2019013, and 2020020). It was undertaken in accordance with the Japanese Act on the Welfare and Management of Animals and the Guideline of Care and Use of Nonhuman Primates, Kyoto University Primate Research Institute. All work undertaken for this study was purely non-invasive. Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable. Data Availability Statement. The datasets that we analyzed for the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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