Int J Primatol (2007) 28:1431–1437

DOI 10.1007/s10764-007-9203-z

Self-injurious Behavior in Zoo Primates

Geoff R. Hosey & Lindsay J. Skyner

Received: 4 August 2005 / Accepted: 16 January 2006 /

Published online: 27 October 2007
# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract Researchers have long known that social isolation of some primates,
particularly in infancy, can lead to the development of abnormal behaviors including
self-injurious behavior (SIB). However, SIB can also occur in non-isolate-reared
primates and can be triggered by frustration or environmental events. The subjects of
reports of SIB have mostly been laboratory primates, usually macaques. Researchers
had not systematically studied whether SIB occurs in zoo primates, and if so to what
extent. Here we report the results of a questionnaire-based survey of British and Irish
zoos on the extent of SIB in zoo primates, and whether it was associated with any
environmental or developmental events. Responses indicated that though SIB
occurred across a range of primate species, its incidence was very low. Respondents
identified a variety of environmental events as implicated in initiating SIB, and
though the data set is too small to confirm them statistically, several trends were
discernible. We conclude that SIB is not a major problem in zoo primates.

Keywords hair-pulling . self-aggression . self-biting . self-injurious behavior

Introduction

Scientists have known for some time that under certain conditions, notably early
social deprivation, laboratory macaques may develop an abnormal behavior in which
they threaten or attack parts of their own bodies. Tinklepaugh (1928) reported one of
the earliest observations of the phenomenon, but it became more familiar during
experiments on maternal and social deprivation in the 1950s and 1960s (Cross and

G. R. Hosey (*)
Department of Psychology & Life Sciences, University of Bolton, Bolton BL3 5AB, UK
e-mail: gh2@bolton.ac.uk

L. J. Skyner
Zoo Education Department, Zoological Society of Manitoba,
54 Zoo Drive, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3P 2N8
1432 G.R. Hosey, L.J. Skyner

Harlow 1965; Harlow and Harlow 1962). Researchers have variously referred to the
behavior as self-aggression (Gluck and Sackett 1974), self-biting and self-directed
aggression (Erwin and Deni 1979), self-fighting syndrome (Allyn et al. 1976), and
self-mutilation or automutilation (Jones and Barraclough 1978). Anderson and
Chamove (1981) thoroughly reviewed the early literature and showed that self-
aggression was most common in rhesus and stump-tailed macaques; it occurred in
individuals from a variety of backgrounds, and in males more than in females. They
distinguished threat and physical attack from excessive hair-picking, which they
considered to be a stereotypy (Chamove and Anderson 1981).
More recently, researchers have regarded self-biting and self-wounding in
macaques as equivalent to self-injurious behavior (SIB) in humans (Lutz et al.
2003a; Novak 2003), and now commonly referred to as SIB. Novak (2003), who
included excessive hair-plucking in SIB, reported that 14% of 188 individually
housed rhesus macaques at the New England Regional Primate Research Center
exhibited SIB, based on treatment for self-inflicted wounds at least once in 5-yr. She
also suggested that habitual biting is usually not hard enough to inflict a wound.
Further, SIB does not correlate with externally directed aggression (Lutz et al.
2003b), suggesting that SIB is not simply the redirection to themselves of aggression
that would otherwise be directed at other individuals. Finally, there is evidence that
SIB in rhesus macaques is linked to malfunctions of noradrenaline and serotonin
neurotransmitter systems as a result of early social deprivation (Kraemer and Clarke
1990). SIB also negatively correlates with plasma cortisol (Tiefenbacher et al. 2000),
suggesting it is a coping mechanism to reduce arousal (Novak 2003).
Though most of our knowledge of SIB in nonhuman primates derives from
studies of laboratory housed rhesus macaques, and to a lesser extent stump-tailed
macaques, the phenomenon also occurs in other species and in other settings. For
example, in wild-living Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata; Grewal 1981), wherein
it occurs sometimes in response to other troop members and sometimes to human
observers. In captive primates, it usually occurs in situations that are stressful to the
individual. For example, Bernstein et al. (1963) reported self-biting in wild-born but
laboratory-housed gibbons in response to novel objects; Mootnick and Nadler (1997),
in a survey of sexual behavior in gibbons in a variety of captive settings, found self-
biting in several individuals in response to stress, and Mitchell et al. (1988) found
self-directed aggression in golden-bellied mangabeys (Cercocebus galeritus
chrysogaster) to occur particularly in captive-born females, especially in stressful
situations. Investigating the correlates of SIB is rarely by itself the object of the
studies, though Skyner et al. (2004) noted that the SIB of a captive pileated gibbon
(Hylobates pileatus) increased when it was exposed to large human audiences.
There are anecdotal reports that animals of a variety of taxa may show self-
directed aggression in zoos (Meyer-Holzapfel 1968; Morris 1964), though
researchers have conducted little systematic investigation. Bollen and Novak
(2000) conducted a survey of abnormal behavior in primates in North American
zoos, but have not published the results. Thus we are largely ignorant of the extent to
which zoo primates display SIB, and if they do, whether the behavior is associated
with any social or environmental variables. Though researchers often do not report
SIB in the zoo literature, it is important to know if the reason is that it occurs only
rarely because there may be issues related to the welfare of the animals and the
Self-injurious Behavior in Zoo Primates 1433

perceptions and attitudes of the visiting public. We report the results of a systematic
survey of British and Irish zoos in which we gathered data on the occurrence and
correlates of SIB in their primates.

Materials and Methods

We devised a questionnaire and modified it after comments from members of the

Federation of Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland (FZG; now known as
BIAZA, The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums) Research Group.
We sent the questionnaire, together with a letter of support from the FZG, to all FZG
member zoos that had primates (n=42). The questionnaire asked for details of
known cases of self-directed behavior, which we thought would be a less sensitive
term. We defined the term in the questionnaire, after the definition of self-aggression
in Anderson and Chamove (1981), as a deviant form of aggression which involves
[persistent] threats and physical attacks towards the self. For each case we asked the
responding zoo for information about species, sex, housing (single, paired, or
group), rearing (hand-reared or group-reared), the form of the behavior, possible
proximate causes, general frequency of the behavior, and any additional observations
that might be of use. After 2 mo we sent the questionnaire again by e-mail to
zoos that had not yet responded.

Results

We received replies from 35 zoos (83% response), 15 of which (43% of those

responding) reported cases of SIB. Altogether there are 24 reported cases of SIB, 4
of which occurred before 1990, and were thus considered historical. The others were
mostly reports of cases within the past 5 yr.

Species

We identified individuals of 16 species as having displayed SIB (Table I). They

include callitrichids, cebids, cercopithecids, and apes, but no strepsirrhine species.
For cases that are not historical, we obtained numbers of individuals of the species
currently held across all responding zoos from the ISIS website (http://www.isis.org),
which permitted the overall rate of SIB across the species to be estimated as 3.7%. If
species for which SIB has not been reported were included, then of course the overall
rate of SIB in zoo primates would be much lower.

Sex, Housing, and Rearing

Fourteen males and 10 females showed SIB. Thirteen of them were group-housed, 6
were pair-housed, and 3 were single-housed. Of the individuals for which the
respondents knew the rearing conditions, 2 had been hand-reared and 13 group-
reared, but information is not available for others. The data are insufficient to carry
out further analysis.
1434 G.R. Hosey, L.J. Skyner

Table I Incidence of SIB cases across different species

Species Total no. of individuals No. showing No. showing

currently helda self-bite hair-pulling

Saguinus bicolor 42 1 0
S. labiatus 27 1 0
b
Callithrix argentata 1 0
b
Ateles sp. 1 0
Pithecia pithecia 27 0 1
Cercopithecus pogonias 3 1 0
C. diana 15 0 1
C. l’hoesti 12 1 0
Mandrillus sphinx 31 2 1
Papio hamadryas 59 0 2
Macaca sylvanus 29 1 0
M. arctoides 7 1 0
M. nigra 86 1b 1
Hylobates lar 26 2 0
Gorilla gorilla gorilla 40 1c 2c
Pan troglodytes 136 1b 2

a
Total number of individuals of those species held in responding zoos as at late 2003
b
Historical cases not included in calculation of rates
c
One individual showed both self-biting and hair-pulling

Form of Behavior

From the respondents’ descriptions, it was possible to collapse the data into 2
categories: self-biting (n=14), which included biting the legs, feet, inside of thigh,
fingers, genitals, and tail tip, and scratching at wounds; and hair pull (n=10), which
included hair-plucking, hair-pulling, and over-grooming. Overall rates for the 2
forms of SIB are 1.8% for hair-pulling and 2.0% for self-biting. There is no
association between form of behavior and either housing category (χ2 =3.33, 2 df,
ns) or taxonomic group (χ2 =0.71, 2 df, ns). There is a trend toward biting in males,
but it is not significant (χ2 =3.7, 1 df, ns). The data are insufficient to allow any
further analysis.

Proximate Cause

Information the respondents provided allowed us to categorize the possible triggers

of SIB into 3 groups: social (n=10), including changes in group composition, stress,
separation from group, approaches by others, conspecific males nearby, aggression
from others, separation from female, removal from group; nonsocial (n=6),
including presence of a small cut, a wound or irritant, cold weather, human contact,
many zoo visitors; and unknown (n=9). The category of trigger is not associated
with the sex of the individual (χ2 =0.4, 2 df, ns), but is associated with taxonomic
group (callitrichids and cebids triggered only by social events, χ2 =10.93, 4 df,
p<0.05) and with form of SIB (more unknown causes of hair-pulling and less of
biting than expected, χ2 =7.0, 2 df, p<0.05). However, observed and expected cell
values were very low, and mostly <5.
Self-injurious Behavior in Zoo Primates 1435

Occurrence

We categorized cases of SIB as occasional (n=11) if they occurred once or just a few
times; or frequent (n=12) if they occurred regularly over a period of several months.
Self-bite was significantly associated with occasional and hair-pulling with frequent
(χ2 =4.67, 1 df, p<0.05).

Discussion

It is very encouraging that the reported rate of SIB in British and Irish zoo primates
is so low. In their survey of North American zoos, Bollen and Novak (2000) reported
abnormal behavior in 497 individuals of 68 different species, giving an overall rate
of 14%, though they include other abnormal behaviors as well as SIB. In contrast,
SIB is relatively common in the rhesus macaque colony Novak (2003) described.
Here, 14% of individually housed monkeys had a veterinary record for SIB
involving wounding, and a further 16% showed self-biting but without inflicting a
wound. Thus we can conclude that SIB is not a significant problem in the zoos we
have surveyed. Because SIB is a sensitive issue in zoos, it is possible that the
responding zoos underreported incidences of SIB, but the possibility is less likely
given that they took the trouble to respond to our survey. Other underreporting could
have occurred if the people who returned the forms were not the people with the
most accurate information. Nevertheless, we are confident that no substantial
underreporting has occurred, and that our results represent a reasonably accurate
estimate of the extent of SIB in zoo primates.
A further issue is whether both forms of injurious behavior -self-biting and hair-
pulling- actually represent SIB. Because of the diverse terminology that researchers
have used to describe these and similar behaviors, identifying counterparts can be
difficult. Novak (2003) used the term SIB to describe ≥2 subgroups of rhesus
macaques: those that bite and injure themselves and those that bite but do not injure
themselves. She also included excessive hair plucking as SIB (Novak 2003, p. 4).
However, in another paper, Novak and coworkers characterized hair-pulling, along
with salute, digit suck, and self-grasp, as a self-directed stereotypy, and restricted the
term SIB to self-bite and self-injure (Lutz et al. 2003a). Chamove and Anderson
(1981) made a similar distinction between self-aggression and stereotypy, including
excessive hair-pulling as a stereotypy. Whether the behaviors are distinct is
important to our understanding of the etiology and possible treatment of the
behaviors, and also their relationship to human SIB. For our purposes, we can note
that if hair-pulling is a stereotypy, then the incidence of SIB in zoo primates is even
lower than we have estimated.
Nevertheless, SIB, particularly in its most severe form, can be very distressing for
zoo keepers and visitors, apart from what it might imply about the psychological and
physical well-being of the individuals. SIB in laboratory macaques is very resistant
to treatment via environmental manipulations (Novak 2003), though researchers
have reported some limited success with treatment with cyproterone acetate (Eaton
et al. 1999) or tryptophan (Weld et al. 1998). Of the reporting zoos in our study,
2 indicated that environmental enrichments were unsuccessful in reducing SIB,
1436 G.R. Hosey, L.J. Skyner

1 found a reduction after treatment with the drug Tardak, and 1 successfully treated
the individual via amputation of the tail tip. The zoos reported only 2 deaths as a
result of self-injury, in 1 of which the zoo was forced to euthanize the individual. In
other cases the individuals stopped spontaneously, stopped because of social
changes, or carried on without causing any harm.
The data for virtually every case we reported were different in some feature, i.e.,
time of onset, proximal cause, frequency, severity, relationship to social and non-
social variables in its environment from the others, which, together with the small
size of the data set, precludes the identification of trends.

Acknowledgments We thank all the zoos that responded to our survey. We thank the Federation of
Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland (FZG) Research Group, particularly Amy Plowman and
Stephanie Wehnelt, for supporting the research and helping to ensure its success.

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