Gibbons are highly social animals, and as any social primate, feeding can trigger significant conflict between individuals in the same enclosure. Dominant individuals within a group can easily monopolise high-value food, causing severe aggression and preventing younger or weaker gibbons from getting enough food, or from accessing all parts of a well-balanced diet.
To manage these dynamics, we can use a number of different strategies:
- Spread food across multiple feeding stations
Food should never be concentrated in a single location. Instead, ideally multiple elevated feeding stations should be et up, spaced widely apart and placed out of direct sight of one another. This visual buffering allows subordinate gibbons to feed securely without constantly monitoring the dominant individuals, which drastically reduces tension and promotes fair food intake for the entire group. - Consider what to feed when
As we have seen, a well-balanced diet is comprised of a number of different food items. It’s common that animals prefer some of these, and see them as higher value, which creates competition between animals. It can be helpful to feed one type of food at a time, to reduce this issue. For example, if the diet contains a number of different vegetables, browse and some seeds, feeding the same vegetables for breakfast, then another one at lunch, a seeds and browse for dinner may alleviate the competition as all animals have access only to the same food at any given time. However, over the day they still get variety. - Ensure animals don’t think some of them are treated unfairly
Gibbons are very intelligent animals. If they see one individual, maybe one which needs additional feeds or medication due to health problems, getting “high-value” food or more human interaction, sometimes this can also trigger aggression. If we need to provide specific food or medication to one animal, especially if that is a lower ranking individual, it might be necessary to distract the dominant animal in the same time.