Mandrills are the world's largest monkeys and live in some of the most complex primate social groups known. Meeting their social and cognitive needs in zoo settings is a significant challenge.
Mandrill welfare in captivity is fundamentally constrained by the impossibility of replicating the thousand-individual social hordes in which wild mandrills live their social lives. Even the largest zoo mandrill groups represent a tiny fraction of natural group size, meaning that the full expression of mandrill social complexity, including the elaborate coalition formation, dominance hierarchies, and social learning of wild groups, is not possible in captive settings. Within this constraint, welfare can be maximised through maintaining the largest possible compatible social groups, providing complex foraging environments that distribute food challenging to find and process, and ensuring enclosures provide sufficient space to establish and maintain social relationships without constant conflict. The welfare of dominant and subordinate individuals within groups requires monitoring to prevent chronic stress in low-ranking animals.