マンドリル（Mandrillus sphinx）における採血のためのハズバンダリートレーニング

抄録

Blood analysis is an important tool for health management. Our zoo succeeded in being the first in the world to train our mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), to allow venipuncture using only behavioral restraint. Two mandrills at Omuta City Zoo participated in this project, one male (A) and one female (B). We used PVC pipe to create a sleeve that could be attached to the enclosure and set a bar inside of it so that the mandrill would grip it underhanded, thus presenting the inner side of the arm. By partially blocking the top half of the inside of the sleeve, the mandrills were guided to use an underhand grip. This simplified the training, with less stress for both animals and keepers. The needle insertion was done into the cephalic vein. We used sweet potato as the unlearned reinforcer and a dog whistle as the learned reinforcer. The process was as follows: 1) excitatory conditioning, 2) gripping, 3) gripping underhanded, 4) avascularization, 5) epilation, 6) needle insertion. Training was held once a day for an average of 6-11 minutes. Number of sessions and cumulative time were 34 sessions/365 minutes for the A and 65 sessions/392 minutes for the B. The training has retained a high success rate (85% for the A, 79% for the B), allowing for regular blood sampling.