{"id":58,"date":"2007-10-12T13:43:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T13:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2007\/10\/12\/fridays-primate-party-5\/"},"modified":"2007-10-12T13:43:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-12T13:43:00","slug":"fridays-primate-party-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2007\/10\/12\/fridays-primate-party-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday’s Primate Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I shouldn’t really call this a party, given the subject matter of the <\/span>article<\/span><\/a> in question, but for the sake of consistency…<\/p>\n

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AllAfrica.com reports that Mauritius is exporting macaque monkeys at $70 a head for research in the US, UK and Japan. The money is used to fund local conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

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As a scientist who loves primates, I have very mixed feelings about this story. I never did animal work myself, having managed to avoid projects that required it, but I fully understand the need for animal models in some kinds of research. Primates are unfortunately necessary in some areas, especially as models of human disease – even though they’re <\/span>not perfect<\/span><\/a>, they’re the best we have – and I sincerely hope that the importing countries only use these animals when there are no other options.<\/p>\n

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Another factor is that macaques are apparently seen as a nuisance in Mauritius, eating crops, killing endangered birds, and other monkey business. The captured monkeys are reportedly kept under good conditions.<\/p>\n

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Overall, it seems like a win-win situation for all involved – except the monkeys. And I still feel ambivalent. I have to admit that I’d naively assumed most Western research animals were captive-bred, and I think it’s the capture of animals from the wild that bothers me here.<\/p>\n

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I’ll close by repeating two words from above.<\/p>\n

Necessary. Unfortunately. <\/span><\/div>\n

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I shouldn’t really call this a party, given the subject matter of the article in question, but for the sake of consistency… AllAfrica.com reports that Mauritius is exporting macaque monkeys at $70 a head for research in the US, UK … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,35,34,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monkeys","category-photos","category-primate-party","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}