Activity profile of free ranging forest group of Assamese Macaque Sarkar P*, Srivastava A, Dasgupta S, Bhattacharjee P C Primate Research Centre, NE Centre, Ananda Nagar, Guwahati, India Wildlife Trust of India, F-13, Sector-8, NOIDA, India *Corresponding author: prabal_india@sify.com
Online published on 2 July, 2012. Abstract A quantitative analysis of activity budget of the forest group of Assamese macaque has been carried out to find out the activity profiles in relation to time allotment and its fluctuations in inter seasonal variability. The study group was selected from the Jokai reserved forest (RF) of Assam (lies between 27015′55″ E to 27020′42″ E and 94050′29″ N to 94055′16″ N) covering an area of 1847 ha. The vegetation profile of this reserved forest is of semi-evergreen type. A total of 4800 scan samples were recorded during June 1997 to May 1998 covering all four distinct seasons. The study group spent more than one third (40%) of their total annual time for foraging purpose, followed by 25% on locomotion, 13% on resting, 10% on grooming, 9% on monitoring, 1% on play and 2% on sexual and other activities. A distinct seasonal variation in activities has been recorded. The activity profiles of the forest group have revealed that foraging is the most crucial factor responsible for the variation in the activity profiles. In forest, as the food was randomly distributed, the group cost-effectively arranged their total time and spent more time on foraging, locomotion and resting and less time in grooming, monitoring and play activities. These findings clearly demonstrated that nature of distribution of food resource is the guiding force for allocating time to various activities in different habitats. Top Keywords Assamese macaque, Macaca assamensis, Jokai RF, Scan sample. Top |