Assessing Public Engagement with Science in a University Primate Research Centre in a National Zoo

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing encouragement by research institutions and funding bodies for scientists to actively engage with the public, who ultimately finance their work. Animal behaviour as a discipline possesses several features, including its inherent accessibility and appeal to the public, that may help it occupy a particularly successful niche within these developments. It has also established a repertoire of quantitative behavioural methodologies that can be used to document the public's responses to engagement initiatives. This kind of assessment is becoming increasingly important considering the enormous effort now being put into public engagement projects, whose effects are more often assumed than demonstrated. Here we report our first attempts to quantify relevant aspects of the behaviour of a sample of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who pass through the ‘Living Links to Human Evolution Research Centre’ in Edinburgh Zoo. This University research centre actively encourages the public to view ongoing primate research and associated science engagement activities. Focal follows of visitors and scan sampling showed substantial ‘dwell times’ in the Centre by common zoo standards and the addition of new engagement elements in a second year was accompanied by significantly increased overall dwell times, tripling for the most committed two thirds of visitors. Larger groups of visitors were found to spend more time in the Centre than smaller ones. Viewing live, active science was the most effective activity, shown to be enhanced by novel presentations of carefully constructed explanatory materials. The findings emphasise the importance and potential of zoos as public engagement centres for the biological sciences.

Evidence of Public Engagement with Science: Visitor Learning at a Zoo-Housed Primate Research Centre

“…Visitor's also demonstrated learning when they interacted with the signage. Installation of the signage alone had no effect on visitor attitudes or learning, which supports previous research that very few visitors look at signage [1], [3]. Yet when visitors fully engaged with the signage (lifting the flap taken as a measure of paying more attention to the sign), and were then asked about the specific information they had read under the flap (which was, perhaps, counter to their intuitive, lay impressions about facial expressions), they demonstrated an increase in knowledge and understanding.…”

The Impact of Cognitive Testing on the Welfare of Group Housed Primates

“…The benefits from the installation of cognitive testing equipment into zoo-housed primate enclosures are not limited to the researcher and their subjects, but there is also a good opportunity to engage with the public about science and enhance visitor experience and learning [47], [48]. Affiliations with zoos can also help to meet their educational and scientific aims [41] and thus should be encouraged.…”

Interspecific interactions and welfare implications in mixed species communities of capuchin (Sapajus apella) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) over 3 years

“…As Living Links is both a research centre and a public engagement with science centre (Bowler et al, 2012;MacDonald and Whiten, 2011) it is also important to consider the methodological implications of our findings for research. In addition to studies on the welfare of the monkeys in mixed species groups, there is research on, for example, cognitive ability, social learning and social networks.…”