Behavioral management: it's everyone's job.

In this day and age of regulatory demands and with the ever-increasing flow of environmental enhancement data and opinions, it can become very confusing for animal programs to create and maintain a successful behavioral management program. Behavioral management as a concept provides a common ground from which animal facilities may start to build a successful facility behavioral program. In addition, the implementation of a behavioral management program can help to break down barriers between members of the various disciplines within the biomedical community. It is everyone's responsibility and duty to work together with this common goal: to provide the best care and environment we can for the animals in our charge. Working together to improve animal behavior can help us to achieve this goal.

Effective Strategy for Evaluating Tactile Enrichment Devices for Singly Caged Macaques.

Since the mandate for providing environmental enrichment for nonhuman primates was included in the Animal Welfare Act, numerous articles and suggestions have been put forth covering tactile devices and creative cage arrangements. For larger primate facilities and research programs environmental enrichment evaluation is usually accomplished by enrichment technicians or behaviorists. However, for the smaller facilities or programs, the ability to formulate and document an enrichment program can be very difficult due to budget or personnel constraints. We present a simple, yet effective, tactile device scoring system used with singly caged macaques indicating that creating and documenting enrichment ideas can be accomplished without a large personnel and budgetary commitment. We believe this strategy will help programs meet the regulatory requirements with relative ease.