Long-tailed Macaque - wild animal or experimental resource?
By Charlie • September 15, 2007 • 1 commentLong-tailed (or Crab-eating) Macaques are found in primary, secondary, coastal, mangrove, swamp, and riverine forests in Malaysia, Southern Indochina, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India’s Nicobar Islands. They live most successfully in disturbed habitats and on the periphery of forests and because the monkeys are tolerant of humans they can be found near villages. In Malaysia, cleared land, such as plantation areas, has been colonized by this species. It has been observed that some disturbed habitats have higher troop and population sizes than some pristine forests: in Singapore they are commonest in and around the highly disturbed forest areas of Bukit Timah and Rifle Range Road/ Central Catchment Nature Reserve (where the photographs below were taken).
Male Long-tailed Macaques have whiskers and moustaches; females have beards. While males grow to between 16 and 25 inches tall, females only reach an average height of 15 to 19 inches. They live in groups of 10 to 48 individuals. In these groups, there are generally 2.5 females for each male. All juvenile males leave the group by age seven.
Sixty-four percent of the Long-tailed Macaques’s diet consists of fruit. Seeds, buds, leaves, other plant parts, and animals such as insects, frogs, and crabs make up the rest.
Long-tailed Macaque
Singapore
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, April 2004
Male, Rifle Range Road, April 2004
Male, Rifle Range Road, April 2004
Male, Rifle Range Road, April 2004
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
Male, Rifle Range Road, Dec 2005
- WikipediaThe Crab-eating Macaque (Macaca fascicularis) is an arboreal macaque native to South-East Asia. It is also called the Cynomolgus Monkey or Long-tailed Macaque.
It is used extensively in medical experiments, in particular those connected with neuroscience. - Laboratory Primate Newsletter: 1984 While the Unted States is the largest consumer of primates in the world, 13 other countries accounted for over 90 percent of the remaining primates used in biomedical and pharmaceutical research worldwide (Caldecott & Kavanagh, in press). Listed in order of decreasing usage they are: the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Japan, France, South Africa, Canda, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, India, and China. Outside the United States, an estimated 50,000 primates were used annually in biomedical and pharmaceutical research from 1977 through 1982 (Caldecott & Kavanagh, in press).
The predominant use of primates in these countries is in the production and testing of pharmaceuticals, a practice that requires constant replacement of animals, either from captive-bred or wild sources. Old World species, primarily green monkeys, long-tailed and rhesus macaques, patas monkeys (Erythrocebus patas), and baboons, account for most of the primates used by researchers outside the United States. - CHAI - Animal experimentation in Israel In early 1991, Israel’s first and only primate breeding facility was established in Moshav Mazor, in central Israel. The farm breeds long-tailed macaque monkeys and sells them for experiments, mainly in the UK, but also in Israel and in other countries. Currently, the farm, known as BFC, holds more than 1,000 monkeys and exports about 300 subjects to the UK every year…
…BFC is heavily involved in the cruel capture of monkeys in the wild, since most or all of its breeding stock is wild-caught. Furthermore, at least two experts who visited the farm criticized the husbandry conditions there. One of the experts, a biologist who served for several years as the Head of the Zoological Garden in Tel Aviv University, noted that the monkeys receive their last meal before noon, and remain without food for about 18 hours every day. He also emphasized that the fact that the monkeys at the farm are afraid of humans indicates problematic husbandry. - National Anti-vivesection Society…These animals are doomed. The only thing to be decided is the horrific nature of their fate - they are all destined to be experimented on in Europe or the USA.
The new monkey factory, built by French company Noveprim in the rural area of Camarles, Spain, already has a capacity for 3,000 monkeys and currently holds the first consignment of 298 animals already sold for vivisection in Germany. The monkeys are cynomolgus macaques, long tailed macaque monkeys that are native to the forests of Asia.
The UK is Europe’s largest user of laboratory monkeys, followed by France and Germany. - mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/Flergus/Malish Undercover footage from inside the walls of the Hebrew Jerusalem University was exposed by the ‘Israeli Society for the Abolition of Vivisection’ (ISAV). The footage showed images of vivisectionists sawing into the skull of a fully conscious long-tailed macaque ['called Malish'] - electrodes were then inserted into his brain…
The following is taken from the ‘experiments’ page of a website called Madison’s Hidden Monkeys, which examines the use of monkeys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison…
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The following is a brief summary of the research being conducted on monkeys at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This page is a work in progress. David Abbott: Abbott’s work involves the experimental induction of various deformities and physiological problems in female monkeys by exposing them to high levels of testosterone in utero. Michele Basso: Basso implants electrodes into monkeys’ brains and surgically implants tracking coils behind their eyes. Ruth Benca: Benca uses monkeys left over from other experiments who have been experimentally brain damaged. She compares the ability to sleep while restrained overnight in a chair in these monkeys and monkeys without the brain damage. Saverio “Buddy” Capuano: WPRC attending veterinarian. Came to UW after a career of infecting monkeys with a terminal monkey virus and recording the details of their demise. Christopher Coe: Coe frightens pregnant monkeys and then compares the effects of such stress on the immune systems of their offspring to the immune systems of monkeys born to mothers who were not similarly frightened. Alexander Converse: A coauthor of Davidson and Kalin. Richard Davidson: Davidson, working primarily with Kalin and Shelton, subjects young monkeys to various fearful experiences, damages their brains, and then compares their resulting responses to the same experiences. B. Göran Hellekant: Hellekant studies the physiology of taste. He dissects living primates’ cheeks and jaws and exposes the nerves that run from the tongue to the brain. He records the nerves’ sensations while dropping different sweeteners onto the monkeys’ outstretched tongues. He has been doing this to primates and other animals for over 30 years. Ned Kalin: Kalin studies the neurophysiology of fear. He and his colleagues have identified a subgroup of monkeys with the genetic predelection to be more fearful. Kalin subjects monkeys with this characteristic to fearful situations before and after damaging their brains. Paul Kaufman: Kaufman experiments on monkeys’ eyes using various surgical and chemical methods. “My research centers on two areas:
Joseph Kemnitz: Kemnitz’s primary work is the long-term consequences of caloric restriction, an area of research mainstream scientists have dubbed, “fringe science.” Mary Schneider: Schneider studies the long-term effects of fetal alcohol exposure. Ei Terasawa: Terasawa studies the onset of puberty and sexual maturation by pumping chemicals in and out of the brains of awake monkeys. The USDA recently discovered that the UW oversight committee had no understanding of what was occuring in Terasawa’s lab and had failed to regulate her experiments as required by federal law. |
Madison’s Hidden Monkeys is a joint project of the Alliance for Animals and the Primate Freedom Project.
All photographs copyright Charlie Moores
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Charlie,
Do you have a way that I can voice my arguments against such horrific treatment?
Linda Q