Samantha Monier PhD
monier.samantha@gmail.com
Lemur Cognition
For my undergraduate thesis I designed a project that evaluated the foraging behavior and cognitive ability of captive lemurs. Lemurs were given the option of solving a puzzle for a high-quality food reward or taking a lower-quality food available for immediate consumption
This ring-tail is solving a string pull task, pulling up the rope to reach the food speared onto the far end
A favorable food reward (in this case, a prune) was placed behind a plexiglass barrier so that it could only be obtained through tool use. Lemurs had to position the tool in such a way that they could rake in the reward. Alternatively, the lemurs could simply take a less preferred food (carrot) which required no tool to obtain
This black-and-white ruffed lemur was capable of solving the cane task (above), but was not always in the mood to (above, right)
In this task, to obtain the prune lemurs had to remove both wooden boards, dropping the food onto the floor and into reach