![\"DSC_0014\"](\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/files\/2016\/07\/DSC_0014.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
To sum up what I’ll be doing as simply as I can:<\/p>\n
The project\u00a0I’m working on was\u00a0established\u00a0around a year ago\u00a0and aims to\u00a0investigate the possible effects of two\u00a0different probiotics on the general\u00a0wellbeing of a number\u00a0of primate species held at the zoo. The\u00a0question being answered is essentially\u00a0as follows: can the known health benefits of these microorganisms\u00a0in humans\u00a0also be\u00a0identified for\u00a0other types of\u00a0non-human primates (NHPs)?\u00a0In the event that positive results are found, future breeding\/ conservations programmes could begin to confidently incorporate probiotics into the set diets of captive NHPs\u00a0in order to\u00a0improve their general wellbeing as well as simply survivorship. The specific\u00a0aspect of this project I will be taking over will\u00a0involve making up and weighing different feeds for\u00a0ten species of primates each morning. Then, at the start\u00a0of the next\u00a0day, I will collect leftover food to calculate how much has been eaten before\u00a0completing faecal scoring to analyse\u00a0their general health. This will be partnered with extended periods of behavioural observations using ethograms to\u00a0hopefully\u00a0make conclusions\u00a0about\u00a0if these probiotics could affect the activity of these primates in any meaningful way. Positive results obtained here will revolve around increased levels of activity and feeding behaviours promoted by the presence of these probiotics.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As complex –\u00a0and ever-so-slightly overwhelming – as the first two days of training were, I’m very excited to\u00a0keep getting more and more\u00a0involved in the project and possibly even get started on some more independent work during downtimes. In addition to research I’m hoping to use the fantastic amount of access I’ll have to these animals to practice some photography and video skills when possible.<\/p>\n As for the near future (later this week), I will be conducting some inter-rater reliability testing. Essentially,\u00a0I will sit in for long observation periods alongside the project leader and see if our\u00a0behavioural scoring systems are statistically similar. This should be a\u00a0good way for me to practice my observational skills under supervision whilst simultaneously completing some important scientific work which will help in the final stages of the study (since these tests can allow conclusions to be made on the accuracy of results collected during observations).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fingers crossed the sun stays out until the weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, following a fairly long (but mostly hassle-free) trip from my home in South London to the sunny seaside town of Paignton,\u00a0I woke up early to start my internship training.\u00a0The town,\u00a0as per\u00a0its namesake, is home\u00a0to the Paignton Zoo & Environmental park as well as the\u00a0Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust. Established in 1959, the Trust operates in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":976,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ben-collier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/976"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/charityinsights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>