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Image of the day – 157
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
I have another animal photo for you today, this is a fairly close shot of a ring-tailed lemur taken from inside the enclosure.
Donna had booked a visit to Paradise Wildlife Park near Broxbourne (now Hertfordshire Zoo), signing up for an opportunity to enter the lemur enclosure with staff, armed only with slices of apple. The lemurs are not tame, but they are habituated to people. They are visited often by parties such as ours so they are used to people, and nobody has harmed them or frightened them and they are very fond of sliced apple so they will happily approach, even sit on your shoulder, take the proffered apple and eat it.
It was a wonderful opportunity for Donna to feed the lemurs and see them up close, something she’d wanted to do for some time so a dream fulfilled. And for me it was an opportunity to take some photos in a very unusual setting! I have to say, it was quite an amazing experience.
Habituation
All animals (including humans) can become habituated to many kinds of stimulae. For example, someone who is scared of spiders, if exposed to very small spiders regularly, will react less and less to their presence because the small spiders have never done them any harm. Then it may be possible to graduate to slightly larger kinds of spider.
If you live near an airport you will probably be habituated to the sound and appearance of low-flying, large aircraft. Your visitors may be alarmed, but for you it’s an everyday experience and you hardly notice it.
And of course it’s easy to become habituated to situations and behaviours that might be harmful, for example driving too fast. If you’re habituated to something inherently unsafe, you probably need to think it through logically and carefully.
See also:
- Habituation – Wikipedia
- Hertfordshire Zoo – Website
- Hertfordshire Zoo – Wikipedia
- Ring-tailed lemur – Wikipedia
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