Reshaping Human-Animal Relationships: Exploring Lemur and Human Enrichment through Smell, Sound, and Sight

Zoos aim to uphold high animal welfare standards while educating the public, yet the direct interactions that attract visitors can negatively impact the animals. Exploring technological solutions to reshape this human-animal relationship in zoos, we developed a novel device allowing lemurs to trigger olfactory, auditory, and visual stimuli in their enclosure. Over 63 days, lemurs engaged most with multimodal stimuli and with visual the least. We then created a similar device for zoo visitors to educate them about lemurs and their stimuli choices. Deploying for 20 days (no devices, lemur-only, visitor-only, and both devices), we examined the impact on visitor behaviour, education, empathy, and experience. From 968 questionnaires and 25,782 visitors, we found that using technology on the lemur and visitor sides jointly significantly enhanced all measured visitor factors, even if the visitors did not directly interact with the device or observe lemurs using theirs. This approach supports long-term conservation and visitor education efforts.