摘要
We studied the responsiveness of the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey Rhinopithecus roxellana, an arboreal Old World monkey, to the presence of novel stimuli associated with familiar food. We also determined differences in responses by age and sex. Results showed that monkeys exhibited neophilia and neophobia simultaneously when facing novel stimuli. Age affected the response to novel stimuli significantly, with immature individuals responding to novel stimuli most frequently and infants least frequently. No significant differences were observed for sex, although females were more responsive to the novel object than were males. Our results support the ＂readiness to eat＂ hypothesis that the presence of a novel object can increase latencies to consume familiar food .
基金
We are grateful to the Director and staff of Zhouzhi National Nature Reserve for their permission to conduct this research. We appreciate Gou ST, Zhang P, Zhu WW, Ren Y, Zhang D, Huang K, Zhang HY, Wu LL, Wang XW, Zhao HT, and Wang CL for their help during the study. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China （No.31130061, No30970444., No.31200293）, the Talent Introduction Fund of Tianjin Nor- mal University （No.5RLII5）, and the Cosmo Oil Eco Card Fund of Japan （2005-2012）.
