Stress-Levels Measured by Cortisol Expression in Captive Chimpanzees, Trends between Gender and Age, and Research Gaps: A Systematic Review

Literature taken into account was published between 1980 and November 2015, and obtained from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). The keywords used were: “Chimpanzee”, “Cortisol”, and “Stress”, which were all separate search queries.

The search generated 366 results, and then evaluated on their significance. The literature was refined further by only incorporating studies that included the examination of captive chimpanzees. Studies that described the methods in which cortisol was extracted, as well as the specificity of the gender and age groups analyzed, were criteria for inclusion.