HABRI Central

Urban wildlife, frequently, comes into contact with human city dwellers and these interactions can be viewed positively or negatively by people. In the city of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil) many city parks have groups of black-tufted marmosets (Callithrix penicillata), which interact with park visitors. In this study we observed 205 separate groups of people interacting with marmosets (using the ad libitum method) and interviewed 408 groups of park visitors, using a questionnaire, concerning their attitudes towards urban marmosets. Our data showed that in the afternoon period human–marmoset interactions were frequent (4/h), involved marmosets on tree substrates and could involve many people (maximum=48). In terms of interactions, the majority of interactions involved people taking photographs of the marmosets, trying to make physical contact with the marmosets and relatively few interactions involved feeding by the humans (

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

1. Feeding
2. interviews
3. Questionnaires