Action for Primates
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Action for Primates |
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The following are take action items we have posted in 2025. See elsewhere for take action alerts from other years. In addition to the Take Action entries below, you can click here for petitions you can sign and share to help non-human primates around the world.
Index of action alerts; select date & title to access:
21 February 2025: Infant bonnet macaques just days old subjected to spinal cord mutilation in USA
Infant bonnet macaques – some just three days old – had their spinal cords partially severed to see how the brain developed as a result of cutting certain nerves in the spinal cord. The publicly funded research was carried out at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee (Jain et al 2025). This brutal treatment of baby monkeys was approved by the university's animal use committee and was partially funded through grant NS016446 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The grant has been in the millions of US dollars over the past many years.
The infant macaques, who ranged in age from three days to 12 days old, were removed from their mothers. Each was subjected to highly invasive spinal cord surgery and destruction. Under anaesthesia, the skin over the spine was incised and muscles and other tissue pulled aside to expose the vertebral column (vertebrae). Part of the bone was removed from the vertebrae (partial laminectomy) to expose the spinal cord. The covering over the cord (dura) was cut into and a bundle of nerves was severed on one side. The surgical wound was sutured. After the infants recovered from this brutal surgery, they were returned to their mothers and allowed to live for three to five years after which time, they were subjected to further surgery and then killed.
The surgically mutilated macaques were anaesthetised and subjected to invasive surgery of the skull in order to implant electrodes and recordings were made. The level of anaesthesia was sufficiently low enough to allow the brain to respond to external stimuli, such as taps on a hand or touching specific digits or parts of the face. At the end of the recording session, the macaques were killed by injection of fixative into the vascular system. The brains and spinal cords were removed for further study.
The researchers thought that their findings suggested alternate nerve pathways can develop if the damage they caused was before the macaques were nine days old. Whether this has any relevance to humans is entirely speculative. Only studies in humans with spinal injuries can determine the nuances of brain development as a consequence. Further, 'mapping' of the nerve function zones would be more reliable and meaningful in humans who do not have to be subjected to invasive brain surgery in order to get results.
Please take action in memory of the six macaques whose lives were taken from them in this cruel and inhumane way:
Cited information:
Jain, Neeraj; Qi, Hui-Xin; Raman, Arun; Lyon, David and Kaas, Jon H. 2025-01-21 Cortical reorganization following dorsal spinal injuries in newborn monkeys reveals a critical period in the development of the somatosensory cortex Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 122(4):e2417417122
Information on NIH grant support (funding) is taken verbatim from relevant publications. If you have difficulty with any links provided, you can do your own search through the NIH RePORTER site: https://reporter.nih.gov/, by copying and pasting the grant number into the Search field on the form.
Be aware that some grants include funds for more than experiments on non-human primates.
6 February 2025: Urgent Call for Mauritius to Reject Monkey Testing Deal with Charles River Laboratories
Action for Primates has joined with other animal protection groups from Mauritius, the USA and Europe – Monkey Massacre in Mauritius, PeTA, Cheshire Animal Rights Campaigns, One Voice and Abolición Vivisección – to send a letter to the Mauritian Prime Minister, appealing for the Government to abandon plans to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Charles River Laboratories. If approved, the MOU would enable the company to carry out pre-clinical testing, including toxicity (poisoning) testing, in the country using long-tailed macaques.
With the scientific community increasingly questioning the use of monkeys on ethical, moral, and scientific grounds – and groundbreaking, non-animal technologies rapidly advancing – signing an MOU would be a regressive and short-sighted move. Instead of clinging to an outdated and ineffective practice, Mauritius has the opportunity to lead in the global shift toward humane, human-relevant, and cutting-edge research methods that represent the true future of science.
The continued use of monkeys in research is not only ethically and scientifically flawed, but also poses a serious public health risk. Mauritius has already been linked to multiple shipments of tuberculosis-infected monkeys, underscoring the dangers of this trade.
Mauritius' global image as a popular holiday destination is already tarnished by its large-scale monkey export industry, with over 10,000 macaques shipped annually to testing laboratories in the USA and Europe. The establishment of a testing facility by Charles River Laboratories – one of the most controversial users of long-tailed macaques – would only deepen this stain. Not only would it further damage the country's reputation, it would also drive an increase in the capture, breeding, suffering, infectious disease transmission and deaths of these exploited animals. Instead of expanding this cruel industry, Mauritius should take a stand against it.
Please take action for the monkeys in Mauritius:
27 January 2025: Rhesus macaque babies removed from mothers and killed to study brain development in USA
Rhesus macaque babies were removed from their mothers and killed in order to see the effects on specific cells in the brain in research done at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA (King et al 2025). This inhumane treatment of the macaques was approved by the university's animal use committee and funded, in part, by the NIH through grants HD103536, MH127486, MH41712 and NS115705, totalling several million US dollars.
The researchers dispassionately referred to their experiment as a novel maternal separation protocol, to examine the effects of early life stress
. This cruel experiment took the lives of twenty-three baby rhesus macaques. The 'test' individuals were removed from their mothers, either after a week or one month of life, in order to cause stress
to see its effects on a cell population in the brain. The macaques were allowed to live for three months or 4-5 years and then killed to get their brains, euphemistically referred to as harvested
. The researchers referred to the killing as sacrifice
. Not that this is a critical issue, but we are astounded that the manuscript reviewers and the journal editors allowed the use of such an archaic and offensive term.
The researchers acknowledged shortcomings of the work including the sheer value of the primate animals used
and that their causing of stress was not well-controlled and may have rendered the results unreliable. They also pointed out that their work in no way provided an understanding of the function of the cells studied, even if this had any applicability to incarcerated macaques, let alone humans.
This incredibly inhumane experiment resulted in substantial suffering and loss for the separated babies and for the mothers whose babies were forcefully taken from them. The information in macaques is irrelevant to people given the fundamental differences between the two species. Careful and ethical clinical and postmortem studies on humans have and will continue to provide valuable insights into how the human brain functions, not artificial and barbaric experiments on monkeys (or other non-consenting beings). Funding agencies can promote a paradigm shift in the situation by only funding studies that are not only human-relevant, but also humane.
What you can do to help:
Cited information:
Information on NIH grant support (funding) is taken verbatim from relevant publications. If you have difficulty with any links provided, you can do your own search through the NIH RePORTER site: https://reporter.nih.gov/, by copying and pasting the grant number into the Search field on the form.
Be aware that some grants include funds for more than experiments on non-human primates.
10 January 2025: Airline alert: urge SmartLynx Malta to stop January monkey transport
Action for Primates has been alerted that SmartLynx Malta is scheduled to transport hundreds of long-tailed macaques – in January 2025 – as cargo from Vietnam, destined for laboratories in the USA. Torn from their families and friends, these intelligent, sentient and complex beings will be forced to endure a traumatic and frightening ordeal, each confined to a small, single crate. Subjected to unimaginable stress and anxiety, they will be loaded into cargo holds to be shipped thousands of miles across the world, involving many hours and multiple stop-overs. This is an inhumane and immoral trade in monkeys' lives. In the past few months, SmartyLynx Malta has transported thousands of Endangered long-tailed macaques from Mauritius and Vietnam to non-human primate dealers and laboratories in the USA and Europe.
SmartLynx Malta is a Latvia-based charter airline, and part of SmartLynx Airlines which, in turn, is part of the Avia Solutions Group, a large aviation services provider with its headquarters in Dublin.
As a result of public concern and opposition, many airlines and cargo carriers, including American Airlines, British Airways, United Airlines, South African Airways, Delta Airlines, Eva Air, Air Canada, China Airlines and Kenya Airways, made the decision to end their involvement in the cruelty and suffering caused by the international trade in non-human primates, by refusing to transport these animals destined for the research industry. More recently, Air France stopped in 2023, after decades of transporting long-tailed macaques from Mauritius and Vietnam to the USA and Europe.
Please join our call to SmartLynx Malta and the Avia Solutions Group to stop their involvement in the brutal trade in macaques for the global research and toxicity (poisoning) testing industry.
What you can do to help:
6 January 2025: Rhesus macaques subjected to brutal brain damage and death in USA
Rhesus macaques had part of their brain removed, followed by virtual social isolation, and then death, in research done at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a branch of the National Institutes of Health in the USA (Eldridge et al 2024). This brutal treatment of these macaques was approved by the NIMH animal use committee and was stated to have followed the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. It was paid for by the US taxpayer through the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH.
Three adult male rhesus macaques were housed singly in metal cages. Although they might have been able to smell, hear or see each other, they were not allowed meaningful social contact, which at a minimum includes the ability to touch, groom and interact directly with others of their kind. This constitutes extreme privation, something that not only is severely detrimental to their welfare and well-being, it also has profound effects on their brains, which means potentially serious confounding of any results sought by the researchers.
Each macaque was subjected to highly invasive brain surgery. After preparing the head, the researchers made an incision through the skin and underlying tissues in order to expose the skull. Bone was sawed through and a portion removed. The thick membrane covering the brain (dura mater) was cut and pulled aside. A suction apparatus was inserted deep into the brain and an entire side of what is known as the orbitofrontal cortex (an area of the brain that controls emotion and behaviour) was aspirated
(sucked out). After this mutilation, the surgical wound was closed.
The macaques were allowed to survive for at least four weeks after surgery, at which time they were killed (euphemistically referred to as euthanized
by the researchers) in order to obtain their brains for further study. The researchers did not even bother to determine the effects such brain damage had on the macaques' short lives.
The goal of this brutal, inhumane research was to determine the distribution of a particular class of nerve fibres which might be involved in certain aspects of brain function. The researchers claimed they were trying to resolve conflicting findings in studies on other macaques. They pointed out, however, that there were data already available from studies on human beings, in particular those who had naturally occurring damage to the same area of the brain being studied in the macaques! The results in the macaque study will have no meaning for humans and are not necessarily even relevant to other macaques (Petticrew & Smith 2012).
Despite protestations to the contrary by the research industry, non-human primates continue to be used in archaic and extremely inhumane research that has no direct relevance to people. If funding agencies would only fund innovative, humane and human-relevant studies using human patients and volunteers, researchers would stop concocting these archaic experiments and concentrate on truly helping humans. We join with experts in primatology in calling for an end to these experiments (Padrell, et al 2021).
What you can do to help:
Cited information:
Here, we will review previous studies showing that primates have complex behaviour and cognition, and that they suffer long-term consequences after being used in invasive research.
Although some invasive studies have allowed answering research questions that we could not have addressed with other methods (or at least not as quickly), the use of primates in invasive research also raises ethical concerns. In this review, we will discuss (i) recent advances in the study of primates that show evidence of complex behaviour and cognition, (ii) welfare issues that might arise when using primates in invasive research, (iii) the main ethical issues that have been raised about invasive research on primates, (iv) the legal protection that primates are granted in several countries, with a special focus on the principle of the 3Rs, and (v) previous and current attempts to ban the use of primates in invasive research. Based on this analysis, we suggest that the importance of a research question cannot justify the costs of invasive research on primates, and that non-invasive methods should be considered the only possible approach in the study of primates. [emphasis added]
Primatologists themselves have warned repeatedly about over-generalising from primate data to human societies...the data may not even be generalisable between similar species of monkey, as comparative research and field studies suggest that there are striking differences in group composition, social spacing, dominance and aggression between species...The social and hierarchical behaviour of Macaca fascicularis, the species used in many of these studies, may not therefore even be representative of all of its own genus, which raises doubt about extrapolation to higher primates.
Information on NIH grant support (funding) is taken verbatim from relevant publications. If you have difficulty with any links provided, you can do your own search through the NIH RePORTER site: https://reporter.nih.gov/, by copying and pasting the grant number into the Search field on the form.
Be aware that some grants include funds for more than experiments on non-human primates.
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