Page 188 - Demo

Chapter 8186Study period 266 days after the first study period, we returned to Allwetter Zoo, and played a few more long call recordings and control sounds to Temmy while she was -most likely- not ovulating. If her strong behavioural responses were the result of a novel sound, and the relaxation of her response over time the result of habituation, we would expect to see a strong response to the long call stimuli after 66 days of no exposure to the stimuli. If the behavioural responses were caused by ovulation, however, we would expect to see no noticeable response during the second study period. The results from the second study period match with the latter: Temmy did not show the strong behavioural response that she showed during the first study period. In total, we played her seven long call stimuli and five control stimuli in two days. The only noticeable response to the stimuli was that Temmy sometimes looked towards the speaker while the stimulus was played, but she did not vocalise or walk towards the source of the stimuli as she had done at the beginning of study period 1.EloiseOur second case concerns Eloise, a Bornean orang-utan female living in LA Zoo. To our understanding, she had been producing vocalisations during ovulation since she became of reproductive age. Although no consistent records exists with regard to this specific behaviour at earlier stages of her life, one of the authors (MF) has worked as her main caregiver since 1999, and observed that she consistently produced vocalisations during ovulation until approximately 2018. The vocalisations consistently co-occurred with ovulation, as evidenced by the fact that Eloise consistently produced the vocalisations approximately two weeks after onset of her menstruation on a monthly basis. Furthermore, her vocalisations coincided perfectly with increased proceptivity towards the flanged male that she was housed with, reflected in following the male and actively soliciting him.During ovulation, Eloise would actively pursue the male, while outside of her ovulation timeframe she would not actively seek him out. This would include her following him throughout the exhibit space; when he would move areas, she would actively follow. She would also position herself for copulation, trying to solicit a response from the male. The male would copulate with Eloise, and would occasionally want to be housed with her overnight. Given Eloise’s condition, she was subordinate to the other females in the group. If any of the other females Tom Roth.indd 186 08-01-2024 10:42