We don’t interfere with our study animals…except when we do

For me, ethic #1 of field work is that by studying and habituating a group of animals we have a responsibility to them.  We are making them vulnerable to other humans; we should never just leave a habituated group behind.  You can (and should) dishabituate groups if a study is being abandoned.  You are responsible for ensuring your actions do not negatively effect the animals.  I think you also have some responsibility towards conservation, education, and working with local people, especially on any conflicts with your study animals.

Now that responsibility doesn’t mean we treat them like pets, or take care of them (ie, day t day needs).  We generally just let life happen…we especially do not interfere in natural injuries, sickness, and death.  It just isn’t our place, and it changes the very things we set out to study. 

Except, sometimes we do interfere.  By we, I mean primatologists in general and sites I have worked at in specific.  When do we interfere with the animals we study?  I’d say many sites interfere when an injury is related to humans: we release trapped animals, treat snare wounds, help juveniles out of wells.  A couple of days ago, one of our juveniles had a snare around his wrist; left as is, he would have certainly lost the hand, possibly died.  We darted him and removed the snare (if we got him in time, he will recover, though he could still lose the hand or die- we have the infamous Peanut of the BBC documentary made here who lost part of his arm from a snare living same group).  On the other hand, we recently had a juvenile monkey from one of our groups dying, from natural causes- he was injured, most likely by another monkey.  The protocol is to do nothing, just collect the body when he dies- this took almost 3 days, 3 days of him laying on the forest floor becoming covered in maggots, unable to move (but alive).  Never have I missed hyenas so much (an animal in this condition would not last the first night, and it would be a mercy- we lack large predators here).    

Now, another detail: I’m working on a highly endangered species (there are something like 5,500 of these monkeys total in the world).  Does that make a difference?  Baboons aren’t endangered, and we still interfered in human caused issues.

Why is the former a special case?  I often have heard human caused treated separately from “natural” causes, to justify our interference.  But, really…aren’t humans part of the natural world?  C’mon, we’re not that special.  After all, we have coevolved with nonhuman primates for millions of years…are these interactions really new things?   Perhaps we feel a moral imperative to interfere with humans?  But, ethically, what should we do?  If we consider that by habituating the animals in the first place, we have made them more vulnerable to such human influence by reducing their fear of humans, perhaps we do.  For me, this is the main reason to justify interference when humans are involved.

How is this not effecting our studies?  I know of one site where the solution to that was to treat the rescued animal as dead in analysis.  That’s a solution I find impossible to actually carry out- that animal interacts with the rest, mates, sires offspring.  You may not be analyzing that animal, but the rest you study are effected.  I’m not really sure how you handle that one.  I do know that the effect on our data is (or should be) at most a minor consideration in the ethics of the situation.