Feeding enrichment is a commonly proposed way to promote natural behavior, greater
activity levels and improved health in captive primates, but in many cases the methods have
not been formally tested, especially for particular groups such as lemurs. We investigated
whether simple changes in food presentation could increase activity levels in captive ringtailed
lemurs (Lemur catta) and reduce the removal by lemurs of food intended for hyrax
(Procavia capensis) and porcupine (Hystrix cristata) (pirating) housed in the same enclosure.
We varied two aspects of food presentation for a population of eight L. catta housed at the
Santa Ana Zoo in a repeated measures, factorial design: the presence or absence of browse in
food boxes, and the clumping or spatial separation of food boxes. The number of animals in
the group engaged in different categories of behaviors wasrecorded with scans every 60 s for
2 h after feeding. Neither the addition of browse (P = 0.58) nor spatial separation of food
boxes (P = 0.13) increased lemur activity levels in the first 70 min post-feeding, but addition
of browse significantly raised activity in the last 50 min (P = 0.038). Adding browse more
than doubled (to 78%) the percentage of observation periods when at least one lemur was
active after 70 minpost-feeding and increased the percentage of active behaviorsduring that
period from less than 4% to over 13%. Spatially separating food boxes reduced pirating
(P = 0.021), but addition of browse did not (P = 0.89). Separating food boxes reduced pirating
by nearly half. Given that these methods are inexpensive, easy to implement and also led to
significant behavioral changes, simple feeding enrichment of this kind is a useful potential
tool for captive ring-tailed lemur management.