Using Social Media for Conservation Monitoring of Rule-Breaking Behaviour in Provisioned Macaque Populations and the Effects of Eco-Tourism.

Electronic versions

  • Toby Ridehalgh

    Research areas

  • Social Media, Macaque, Provisioned, National Parks, Instagram, Tourism

Abstract

Macaques are one of the most well studied non-human primate species, however assessment of provisioned (wild primates that are provided with food by local humans, tourists, or designated rangers) troops is relatively untouched, with some suggesting that the study of provisioned populations provides unusable behavioural and social data. Gathering data via Instagram can potentially allow for en-masse crowd sourcing from a practically unused data vein, with hundreds of thousands of pieces of biodiversity data at our fingertips. In this study we outline the definitions, potential benefits and drawbacks of ecotourism, as well as quantify data gathered over the course of four months via Instagram from four provisioned macaque sites across the globe. The study investigates what are the main preferences for photos of the tourists visiting the area, the interactions between tourists & macaques and whether visitors of National Parks are more or less likely to record acts of deviancy than of sites with more relaxed rules. It was found that rule breaking, and interactions were significantly lower in the National Parks than in the Provisioned sites. In each individual site, instances of tourists adhering to the rules were also significantly higher than instances of deviancy across all four sites, which could be beneficial to the health of the troop, allowing for a more natural living environment. Data gathered via social media could hold the key to quick, accurate and vast sources of data, however preliminary studies may need to be conducted in order to compare social media data with more traditionally gathered data to see if they positively correlate.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
Supervisors/Advisors
Award date14 Sept 2021