Monkeys restrain themselves, make them look at animated figures; PETA urges magazine to withdraw paper

For immediate release:
18 March 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Bethesda, Maryland. – Today PETA sent a letter to Richard White, editor-in-chief of the magazine. Scientific reports, urging him to abandon a recent article co-authored by National Institutes of Health experimenter Elizabeth Murray. In their letter, PETA points to a catastrophically flawed experimental design involving intelligent apes.

The article describes how experimenters deprived monkeys of fluid, immobilized them in armchairs, and rewarded them with drops of juice only if they looked at certain points on the screen. They then showed the monkeys moving figures that supposedly mimicked behaviors such as chasing, seducing, and fighting. The experimenters wanted to know if monkeys displayed a similar human preference for cartoons depicting certain types of behavior, but it’s no surprise that monkeys who have spent their lives in social isolation in captivity and have never seen two people chase, seduce, or fight one. the other didn’t seem to show much interest in the video.

“This trash experiment suggested that the monkeys would give meaning to shapes representing movements they had never seen in their lonely, deprived life,” says PETA neuroscientist Dr. Catherine Rowe. “For the scientific purity and welfare of animals, Scientific reports I must withdraw this article and make sure that irrelevant, potentially misleading experiments like this one no longer end up on its pages. “

Murray is no stranger to useless experiments on monkeys. She also conducts painful and invasive experiments in which she inflicts permanent and traumatic brain damage to monkeys and then deliberately terrorizes them by locking them in a cage and showing realistic-looking snakes and spiders. Murray’s brutal and useless experiments on monkeys went on for more than 30 years and cost taxpayers almost $ 49 million, without leading to any preventive measure, treatment or cure for human diseases.

PETA, whose motto is in part that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes arrogance, a worldview focused on human excellence. For more information please visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…