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In-homecage venipuncture of 10-year-old Owen, who avoids the stress of immobilization by cooperating. The author's experience with captive animals and commitment to their well-being inspired him from 1986 on to gradually develop the following alternative management practices for caged rhesus macaques, allowing for social housing and low-stress handling. Staring at a caged rhesus monkey, for example, is unskillful the gesture acts as a threat, and the 'cornered' animal has little choice but to react in a defensively aggressive way. Such provoked aggression is defensive rather than offensive, and unskillful management and/or human behavior is responsible for it.
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After having studied the behavior of several animal species for many years, the author has come to the conviction that captive animals are not particularly aggressive management-related circumstances, however, can make them aggressive.
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This, however, does not prove that the animals are particularly aggressive by nature. It is also true that they can be extremely aggressive when introduced to strange conspecifics. It is true that adults, especially males, can inflict serious wounds with their razor-sharp dagger-like canines. The rhesus' bad reputation is based on a belief with little verifiable evidence. It should also be avoided for scientific reasons, since distress is likely to affect the subject's physiology and emotional state.Īre there alternatives to single-caging and stressful handling for adult rhesus macaques which can guarantee the safety of both the animals and the personnel? Enforced restraint of any animal, including rhesus macaques, is a distressing experience which should be avoided for obvious ethical reasons. Continual single-housing of any social animal, including rhesus macaques, raises ethical and scientific concerns because it ignores the subject's species-typical need for social contact and interaction.Ģ. Both circumstances are unsatisfactory for the following reasons:ġ. This notion is reflected in the conventional housing and handling of adult rhesus macaques assigned to research protocols -the animals are most often kept singly and handling procedures usually involve forceful restraint (Bayne, 1989). They are supposedly not only belligerent toward humans and dangerous to handle, but also vicious toward other conspecifics and hence difficult to introduce to members of their own kind (Wickings and Nieschlag, 1980 Kessler et al., 1985 Line, 1987 Line et al., 1990 Reinhardt, 1991a). There is a wide-spread belief that adult rhesus macaques are particularly aggressive animals (Vandenbergh, 1966 Southwick, 1967 Lindburg, 1971 Fairbanks et al., 1978 Teas et al., 1982 Thierry, 1985).
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Ending the Slaughter of Nonambulatory Pigs.State Wildlife Agency Contact Information.
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How to Communicate Effectively with Legislators.United States Legislative Information (external link).Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act.Farm Animal Anti-Confinement Legislation.Cetacean Anti-Captivity Legislation and Laws.Anti-whistleblower (“Ag-Gag”) Legislation.Traveling Exotic Animal and Public Safety Protection Act.Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act.Shaping Policy for Animals in Laboratories.
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