We're in East Park
We’re a group of first year Zoology students at Hull University,
and currently we are undergoing a little practical in this bird cage.
We're just observing some ducks, currently.
My group's observing lemurs,
about behaviour, when they've got food and when they haven't, seeing
what the differences are.
This is the culmination of a series of months of efforts for our first year
biologists, zoologists and marine biologists.
We're out today in the Animal Education Centre of East Park
with mostly
our zoology cohort,
and I think today we're focusing on the animal behaviour groups,
focusing on the impact of enrichment feeding on captive animal behaviour.
So we're looking at some whistling ducks inside the walk-through aviary
and some ring-tailed lemurs just outside and they're going to be looking
at how does enrichment feeding change the behaviour of these groups.
And in a couple of weeks they're going to give a scientific presentation
to the whole cohort to tell us what they found.
We're looking at the aggression in the ducks before and after feeding.
We're going to just have a look every 10 minutes
to see if they've shown any tendencies and if there's more after feeding or
during feeding.
We just made a little table and gonna just observe things
and then write down the type of behaviour that is.
Biology doesn't happen in the lecture theatre.
If you want to teach students about biological principles,
then you have to go to where the biology is
and they have to observe it and absorb it in that environment.
They wait for
the dominant to finish eating because he's been eating non-stop.
He's kind of had a couple of breaks, but he seems to be
staying around the food source and then when he backs away
the next two have currently being on the food source.
Now with the fourth one, the one who hasn’t eaten yet
is staying around the group but not near the food source.
He comes out before the female
to check everything's alright and there's like no problem.
And also females are more dominant than males
so she's eating first and he's not.
And he's watching to make sure that she's safe.
But that just shows that she is in charge, because he was just like, "Oh boy, food!"
It’s just teaching us, like, sort of,
just view them and, like, look at them and see different things.
Like even things that you wouldn't
usually see if you were just walking through.
If you see that first hand, I think it really sets in stone for you.
Gives us first hand experience.
It's kind of good we have access to stuff like this.
Being here, looking at different animals,
you know, what their behaviour is like here.
And then when you go into the wild, you can see [how] their behaviour
is different, and how they are in their own habitat.