Primates in Laboratories

Unseen they suffer,                          Unheard they cry,                          In agony they linger,                          In loneliness they die.

While many primates used in experimentation are bred in government and commercial facilities, many are caught in their natural habitats. Each year, more than 32,000 wild-caught primates are sold on the international market—and one-third of all primates sold internationally are imported into the United States. Most end up in laboratories, where they lead lives of deprivation, loneliness, pain, and misery.

Deprivation

The barren steel cages that house primates in laboratories are a far cry from the lush forests and savannahs that are their natural homes. In their natural habitats, nonhuman primates may travel for miles, foraging for a variety of foods, socializing with family and friends, and engaging in a variety of other activities—climbing hills, swinging from vines, swimming in rivers, scampering across fields, and cavorting with their companions.

In laboratories, these animals are confined to small wire cages that allow them barely enough room to sit, stand, lie down, or turn around. The rich days full of sensory stimulation that they should be experiencing are replaced by days that are drained of color, scent, and almost every other type of environmental enrichment. At most, the primates in laboratories are given cheap plastic toys, scratched mirrors, and the occasional slice of apple or banana. At Covance Laboratories, monkeys were given sawed-off pieces of PVC to play with, and one Covance instructor even resented it when a technician gave a few ice cubes to the animals.

The federal Animal Welfare Act requires that research facilities provide environmental enhancement to promote the psychological well-being of primates, but too often, these facilities provide only the absolute minimum. As a result, animals experience high levels of stress, anxiety, boredom, and fear. Many go insane, exhibiting behaviors such as rocking back and forth, pacing their cages endlessly, and repeating motions for no apparent reason. They even engage in self-mutilating behaviors, including tearing their hair out or biting their own flesh. Video footage taken inside Covance’s laboratories illustrates the extent of the lab-induced insanity that can result when primates are completely deprived of sensory stimulation.

Loneliness

In laboratories, baby primates are separated from their mothers only days after birth. Then, these social animals are often housed alone in small steel cages, deprived of the social interaction that they so desperately need in order to thrive. Video footage of monkeys at Covance shows their desperate desire for social interaction as they groom the hand of PETA’s investigator and reach through their cage bars to clutch the hands of monkeys in neighboring cages.

Pain and Misery

Primates in laboratories are subjected to myriad painful procedures. At Covance, PETA’s investigator witnessed cruel tests in which thick tubes were forced up the tiny nostrils and down the throats of juvenile monkeys, resulting in choking, gagging, and daily nose bleeds. Ropes were used to crudely bind monkeys to restraint chairs, and the animals were pushed into hard plastic tubes where they bled after drugs were forced into their bodies. Tight alligator clips were clamped onto monkeys’ nipples for ECG readings, and sick and injured animals were denied veterinary care and left to suffer alone. Many animals died unattended in their cages, while others died painful deaths on the operating table as a result of botched procedures. Adding insult to injury, the monkeys at Covance were treated abominably by lab workers who struck, choked, and threatened them, threw them against cages, and tormented them psychologically. Watch PETA’s undercover video footage taken inside Covance’s squalid facility to learn more about the abuse suffered by the monkeys in this laboratory.

The cruelty is not limited to businesses such as Covance—primates are abused even at some of the most prestigious universities in the United States. For example, a postdoctoral veterinary fellow working in the labs at Columbia University blew the whistle on grisly experiments that were conducted on primates who received insufficient pain relief before, during, and after highly invasive procedures. In one particularly hideous test, experimenters removed the left eyes of baboons and inserted clamps through their empty eye sockets to cinch major arteries leading to the brain. The baboons suffered strokes and were then deposited back in their concrete-and-steel cells. There, the animals languished, unable to lift their heads, take sips of water, or even breathe properly. Denied veterinary care, the animals suffered in this obscene manner until they died alone in their cages a few days later.

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