19 February 2026: Monkeys forced to consume alcohol by Canadian researchers in St Kitts and Nevis

African green monkeys (also called green monkeys) were used in a meaningless experiment by Canadian scientists at the Behavioural Science Foundation in St Kitts and Nevis (Bellemare et al 2025). The experiment was approved by animal use committees of the University of Montreal and the Behavioural Science Foundation, and funded by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Forty-nine pregnant green monkeys were used. Twenty-seven of them had been coerced into drinking alcohol-laced water (euphemistically referred to as "self-administration" and "the monkey decides to drink alcohol" by the researchers). The other 22 were used as 'controls'. Exposure to alcohol was timed to start after the second month of the pregnancy and continued until the birth of a single infant. Each of the 'control' monkeys also gave birth to a single infant.

For the alcohol consuming monkeys, water with an alcohol concentration of 10% was made available for four hours every day, four days a week. This was to prevent miscarriage and abnormal behavioural complications caused by alcohol.

The infants were taken from their mothers and anaesthetised so that various tests could be done on them. The tests are routinely done on human patients and included determining eye pressure, electrical activity in the retina and the amount of oxygen in the retinal blood vessels. Although there were differences in the results between the two groups of infants, the infants of alcohol-exposed mothers "looked otherwise healthy". No mention was made of the ultimate fate of the mothers and infants.

Because humans do drink alcohol during pregnancy, studying them would benefit them and their children, using humane and ethically defensible techniques. The researchers in this monkey experiment even cited examples of these studies, the results of which are directly relevant to the human situation. There was no reason to subject these monkeys to the inhumanity of captive life, being forced to consume alcohol and being subjected to capture and the unpleasantness of anaesthesia. This immoral treatment of our closest biological relatives continues despite the research community claiming they use non-human primates only when necessary and only for research vital to human health. This experiment is just one more example of the disingenuousness of such claims.

Bellemare, Guillaume; Catarina Micaelo-Fernandes; Hadi A. Belanger; Marie-Lou Garon; Maurice Ptito; Roberta M. Palmour; Sergio Crespo-Garcia and Jean-François Bouchard 2025-11-01 Impact of prenatal alcohol exposure in midlife: an assessment of the retina in the vervet monkey Experimental Eye Research 260:110638

We do not believe we need to accept nor expand upon the researchers' reasons or justifications for doing any research involving non-consenting beings such as non-human primates. Any information gained is at an unacceptable moral cost.

9 February 2026: Animal groups condemn inhumane monkey transports from Mauritius

Animal protection groups continue to raise concerns about the ordeals suffered by long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) transported by air from Mauritius to the USA. Most recently, macaques exported from Mauritius on 27 January 2026, endured a 28-hour ordeal. A whistleblower disclosed that the macaques were exported by Bioculture Mauritius Ltd., for its sister company BC US LLC located in Immokalee, Florida. The macaques were transported by SkyTaxi IGA418, leaving Mauritius at 21:18 on Tuesday 27th January and reaching Miami International Airport at 17:10 on Wednesday 28th January. This transport time did not include the many hours involved in the initial loading and final unloading of the macaques at airports, nor the road transport to and from the airports in Mauritius and the USA.

The arduous journey involved three flights, with stopovers in Toulouse and New York. The flight time from Mauritius to Toulouse was 12 hours and 12 minutes. The stop in Toulouse lasted one hour and twelve minutes. This would not have been long enough for the macaques to be individually checked and provided with food and water if needed. The next stop was John F. Kennedy International Airport almost eight hours later.

The animal protection groups, including Monkey Massacre in Mauritius, Action for Primates and Cheshire Animal Rights Campaigns, have previously raised concerns about the welfare of macaques exported from Mauritius, the impact that the extremely long and stressful transportation has on them, and whether providing food and water en route and carrying out necessary health and welfare checks on hundreds of macaques confined individually in small crates, can be done adequately. They believe that the Mauritius government is failing in its obligations under Article IV of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) (Regulation of Trade in Specimens of Species Included in Appendix II). Paragraph (c) requires that a Management Authority of the State of export is satisfied that any living specimen will be so prepared and shipped as to minimize the risk of injury, damage to health or cruel treatment...

Examples of other transports from Mauritius have involved hundreds of macaques at any one time, which lasted for as long as 44 hours, and included multiple international flights with five or six stop-overs. During transport, the macaques are forced into small single transit crates which do not allow normal postural adjustments and provide none of the direct socialisation critical for welfare and well-being. It is well-known that transportation of macaques, whether by road or air, is extremely stressful for them and can lead to distress and death.

• On 7th October 2025, SmartLynx Malta left Mauritius at 20:51, with hundreds of long-tailed macaques on board. At 09:34 on 9th October, 44 hours after leaving Mauritius, it landed at Miami International Airport. This gruelling ordeal involved seven flights and layovers in Ethiopia, Greece, Belgium, Iceland, Boston, New York and Miami.
• On 16th September 2025, 500 long-tailed macaques were exported from Mauritius. They were transported by Sky Vision, which left at 20:52 on 15th September 2025 for Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport via layovers at Mombassa and Cairo. After around eight hours in Paris, the macaques were transferred to a SmartLynx Malta aircraft and then transported to Chicago O'Hare International Airport via stops in Iceland, Boston and New York, arriving in Chicago at 02:40 on 17th September 2025—almost 40 hours after departing Mauritius.

A particularly serious incident in 2025 involved a failure to provide water en route during one transport that took over 40 hours from Mauritius to the USA (Miami), involving six flights and five stop-overs, between 6-8 July 2025, This failure came to light as a result of a routine inspection by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors at Miami airport. On this occasion, 500 macaques, transported by SmartLynx Malta, were not offered potable water at the required frequency (at least every 12 hours) as required under the US Animal Welfare Regulations (Section 3.89). The USDA Inspection Report documenting the critical violation by the broker—ACA International LLC—of the shipment stated: Failure to provide water at appropriate intervals can lead to dehydration or other conditions that could be harmful to the health and well-being of the animals. The USDA also cited SmartLynx Malta for improperly stacking crates of macaques in this shipment, making numerous animals inaccessible to flight crews.

Sarah Kite, Action for Primates, stated: It is unquestionable that the lengthy transportation and confinement conditions for the long-tailed macaques exported by Mauritius are inhumane. We are calling for an urgent investigation into the concerns we have raised and the country's compliance with CITES regulations.

18 January 2026: Macaques suffered in meaningless research in Japan to study motivation in people

In research to study human motivation under aversive conditions, Japanese macaques were subjected to brutal head surgery and killed at Kyoto University, Japan (OH 2026). This inhumane research which had no clinical applicability to people—in whom the information is easily obtained—was approved by the university's animal use committee (approval number 24097).

Two adult Japanese macaques (also known as snow monkeys) were subjected to craniotomy, a highly invasive surgery through the skull, in order to implant a recording chamber using bone cement and screws. Although antibiotics were given after the surgery, there was no mention of any pain relief. After "full recovery", another surgery was done to remove the skull over the target regions of the brain.

The macaques were "trained" to respond to certain stimuli by restricting water availability sufficiently to create a degree of dehydration (thirst) that would 'motivate' them to respond. This inhumane fluid restriction was continued throughout the testing period.

Testing was done using electrodes driven into the brain. Viral proteins were also injected into brain. The tests were done with the macaques restrained in a soundproof dark booth. In order to get a fluid reward, the macaques had to look at a point in space. Puffs of air to the face were used to try to dissuade the macaques from responding in order to test their degree of "motivation". A test drug was injected into the brain to modify the responses. After the testing was done, the macaques were killed under anaesthesia to get brain tissue.

The researchers were using the macaques to try to understand "motivation". The situation in the macaques, however, is not analogous to the situation in humans. The macaques had to endure the stress of captivity in a laboratory, the pain and suffering of invasive head surgery, being without sufficient water for periods of time and, ultimately, death for something of no value to their species and which could easily be determined in humane, ethical studies in human volunteers.

OH, Jung-min N.; Satoko Amemori; Ken-ichi Inoue; Kei Kimura; Masahiko Takada and Ken-ichi Amemori 2026-01-09 Motivation under aversive conditions is regulated by a striatopallidal pathway in primates Current Biology S0960-9822(25)01688-4

Craniotomy: This is a surgical procedure to access the brain. Typically, an area on the head is shaved. An incision is made through the skin and tissues underlying it, down to the surface of the skull, in such a way as to create a flap that can be pulled away to expose the skull. Depending on what type of access to the brain is required, holes may be drilled through the skull into the brain cavity, for example for injections, or a portion of the bone may be cut out in order to implant a bank of electrodes. When done, bone cement may be used to fill in the hole in the skull and the overlying tissues sutured.

We do not believe we need to accept nor expand upon the researchers' reasons or justifications for doing any research involving non-consenting beings such as non-human primates. Any information gained is at an unacceptable moral cost.