Marmoset monkey torture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

It isn’t what the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center shows you on the “Callicam”

MADISON, Wisconsin––The Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison is proud of the Callicam,  an online exhibition of “Our current breeding lobby marmoset family.”

Invites the Callicam website,  “Watch and learn more about these engaging monkeys.

“The Wisconsin National Primate Research Center supports one of the largest colonies of common marmosets [Callithrix jacchus] in the United States,”  about 270 at any given time,  the website boasts.

The center inventory also includes about 1,020 rhesus macaques and 200 crab-eating macaques.

“The lights are switched off so the monkeys can sleep”

“Through the Callicam,”  the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center says,  “virtual visitors can observe a common marmoset family that lives in our lobby vivarium.

“You may also contact us if you would like to schedule an in-person visit to the Primate Center’s Marmoset Learning Lobby.”

But there is a kicker:   “If you do not see any animals,  the marmosets are either temporarily out while the vivarium is being cleaned,  or the lights are switched off so the monkeys can sleep.  They might also be resting or sleeping in hammocks and out of view.”

Sound blasts every 15 minutes

University of Massachusetts–Amherst researcher Agnès Lacreuse and Ricki Colman of the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center staff are much less solicitous of some of the resident marmosets’ sleep time.

Begged the Madison-based Alliance for Animals on April 29,  2024,  asking for letters of protest directed to University of Wisconsin–Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin,  “Time is running out for these poor animals.  Here’s what’s going to happen if we can’t stop it:   These innocent little sweethearts will be woken up during the night at several intervals (up to 46 times) with noise blasting as loud as a lawnmower.

“The National Institute on Aging funded this and Ricki Colman is the UW-Madison experimenter who will be in charge of this outrageous brutality,”  the Alliance for Animals said.

“Cruel,  pointless, bereft of scientific rigor”

“She also happens to be the head of the university’s animal oversight committee,  which voted to approve this —a vote that likely breaks a bunch of federal laws.”

The rhetoric echoes appeals posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for nearly six months,  but despite having had six months in which to try to make a persuasive case for the marmoset experiments,  Lacreuse and Colman appear to have made no case at all.

What,  specifically,  do Lacreuse and Colman hope to find out?

The soon-to-start marmoset experiments came to light when PETA science editor and manager Keith Brown on November 10,  2023 advised members that,  “University of Wisconsin–Madison officials have green-lit experiments on marmosets that are so cruel,  so pointless,  and so patently bereft of scientific rigor that it strains credulity to think they could ever have been approved by anyone.”

Five million bucks to wake up tiny monkeys?

At Agnès Lacreuse’s request,  Brown said,  “with funding from the National Institutes of Health,”  reportedly $5 million to date,  “experimenters at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center intend to prevent tiny,  sensitive marmosets from sleeping more than 15 minutes at a stretch for several nights a week in a wrongheaded attempt to somehow glean insight into the effects of sleep deprivation on humans’ ability to think clearly and the effects of sleep deprivation on Alzheimer’s disease.

Detailed Brown,  “Every 15 minutes during the night,  experimenters blast the monkeys for six full minutes with noises measuring from 60 to 90 decibels.  By comparison,  the average noise from a vacuum cleaner is about 70 decibels.

“The monkeys will be startled awake as many as 46 times during the night for a total of 276 minutes for three consecutive nights.

35 million years separate humans from marmosets

“The experiments break no new ground,”  Brown continued.  “A wealth of published information already exists about the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive decline in humans. Numerous other studies have already examined the same effects of sleep deprivation in human volunteers,  and they were all completed without a monkey body count.

“Humans who experience poor sleep aren’t suffering because they’re startled awake by loud noises at preset intervals,”  Brown added,  “but rather because they suffer from poor sleep for biological and neurological reasons not covered by this experiment.

“In addition, marmosets aren’t miniature humans. Numerous physiological and biological differences between species make marmosets a poor stand-in for humans.”

The evolutionary distance from marmoset to human is approximately 35 million years,  about half the time elapsed since the extinction of land-dwelling dinosaurs.

Agnès Lacreuse

Updated Brown on January 26, 2024,  “After hearing from PETA,  the animal oversight committee at the University of Wisconsin–Madison decided that the experiment being planned there at the request of Agnès Lacreuse should be reclassified into the most painful category.”

But that made no difference in Lacreuse getting the university go-ahead to do the sleep deprivation experiment.

PETA and Western Massachusetts Animal Rights Advocates on February 1, 2024 protested against the University of Wisconsin-Madison sleep deprivation experiment and other Lacreuse work on marmosets at her home campus,  the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.

“Lacreuse surgically removes marmosets’ reproductive organs,  screws electrodes into their skulls,  and heats their tiny bodies [to far more than their normal body temperatures] with hand warmers,”  alleged PETA spokesperson Tasgola Bruner.

“Once she’s done,  she kills the marmosets and dissects their brains.  This is all to induce symptoms of menopause,  which they don’t naturally experience.”

What might the purported beneficiaries say?

About 18 million women,  perhaps 10% of the female population of the U.S.,  may experience post-menopausal symptoms,  at various levels of intensity.

That,  one might imagine,  could make experiments directed at finding relief for post-menopausal symptoms an easy sell to the public.

But about 33 million women,  nearly twice as many,  donate to animal causes,  among whom about half,  according to donor surveys,  are post-menopausal.

Crude math suggests that up to 90% of the nominally intended beneficiaries of the Lacreuse marmoset experiments would be likely to reject her approach,  if asked for an opinion.

Undercover investigation

PETA has already been in conflict with the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center over other experiments for decades.

Most recently,  summarized Ava Menkes on January 25,  2024 for the University of Wisconsin Daily Cardinal,  “In June 2022 PETA filed a petition to a Dane County judge accusing Wisconsin National Primate Research Center staff of animal cruelty charges related to the mistreatment of two monkeys,”  in this case rhesus macaques.

“The allegations blossomed from a 2020 operation conducted by PETA,  which they say found evidence of animal mistreatment in video footage from an individual who worked in the lab for six months.”

The ghost of Harry Harlow

PETA vice president for laboratory investigations Alka Chandna alleged that the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center was reviving experiments done by the center founder,  Harry Harlow (1905-1981) from 1930 to his forced retirement in 1971.

“In November 2023,”  Menkes wrote,  “Dane County Circuit Judge Nia Trammell declined to file charges against the lab or appoint a special prosecutor.”

Pronounced Trammell,  “Given the totality of the allegations made and evidence available,  it appears it would be difficult for any prosecutor to meet their burden of proof and obtain a conviction on the alleged offenses.”

Who was Harry Harlow?

As to Harlow,  summarizes a PETA web page,  his “psychological experiments on monkeys were infamous for their cruelty.  Harlow tore newborns away from their mothers,  gave some infants “surrogate mothers” made of wire and wood,  and kept other traumatized babies in isolation in tiny metal boxes,  sometimes for up to a year.

“Realizing that such horrific conditions resulted in long-term,  debilitating psychological trauma for the infants,  Harlow began expanding his project.  He and his then-student Stephen J. Suomi,”  later chief of the Laboratory of Comparative Ethology at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland,  “created the ‘pit of despair,’  a dark metal box designed to isolate the monkeys from everything in the outside world.

Researchers made matters worse,  on purpose

“Within days,  the monkeys kept inside the pit were driven insane,  incessantly rocking and clutching at themselves,  tearing and biting their own skin and ripping out their hair.

“When finally removed from isolation,  they were too traumatized to interact with other monkeys,  and some were so shocked and depressed that they starved themselves to death.

“To see what would happen when tormented monkeys became mothers themselves, Suomi and Harlow created what they called a ‘rape rack’ in order to restrain and impregnate female monkeys.  Then they would later watch and photograph the mentally ill mothers physically abusing and killing their own babies.”

Bombing

Even before there was an animal rights movement calling itself by that name,  Harlow’s monkey experiments were so widely abhorred that a 1970 failed bombing attempt at the University of Wisconsin Primate Research Center was at first believed to have been directed at Harlow.

Years later the bombing was found to have been a failed attempt by four anti-Vietnam War protesters to bomb the Army Mathematics Research Center across the street.

The four succeeded on second try,  killing post-doctorate math student Robert Fassnacht,  who also opposed the Vietnam War,  and severely injuring three other students who had no involvement with the war.

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