Animals that Start with B - Listed With Pictures, Facts
Monkeys Eavesdrop On Each Other And Listen In On Monkey Conversations
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, humans are definitely the best at gossip and drama. It's almost like we were built specifically for the purpose of talking behind each other's backs, so it comes as no surprise that we've invented countless methods for listening in on conversations that don't actually include us.
As a new study published in Science Advances reveals, our primate cousins apparently have some very similar habits, and marmoset monkeys in particular are skilled at listening in to their peers. In fact, they're so good at spying on one another that they've developed the ability to use the information they gain from eavesdropping to plan how to interact with other monkeys in the future.
In the study, the researchers explain how they used thermal imaging to spy on the spying monkeys. By doing so, they were able to measure the emotional impact of what the primates were hearing while they were in eavesdropping mode.
"We were able to use this technique to show that the marmosets did not perceive the vocal interactions between conspecifics as the mere sum of the single call elements but rather perceived them holistically, as a conversation," Rahel Brügger, Ph.D., first author of the study, said in a statement.
When emotions begin flowing, body temperature in certain areas can change dramatically. The team kept a close eye on the noses of the spying monkeys in order to spot changes in facial temperature. When the temperature in the face drops it's an indication of heightened emotions, the researchers say, and they further studied the reactions by playing recorded vocalizations of "conversations" between primates as well as sounds from animals that were not actively communicating.
The team found that the monkeys responded much differently when hearing communications between two monkeys as opposed to when they heard random calls. This was evidence, the researchers say, that the vocal interactions between the primates are indeed the rough equivalent of a conversation and that the monkeys that are listening in are doing so for social purposes.
"This study adds to the growing evidence that many animals are not only passive observers of third-party interactions but that they also interpret them," Judith Burkart, co-author of the study, explains. "In addition, our study shows that thermography can help unveil how these social interactions are perceived by nonverbal subjects."
So the next time you have the urge to listen in on someone else's conversation, just know that we're not the only species that does it.
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Serious Monkey Business. The Animal Cruelty In Our Midst.
On a quiet tree-lined road in rural Victoria is a large primate breeding and research facility. To all, apart from those who work there, it is largely a mystery. But the animal cruelty is not, Robyn Kirby reports.
The location, halfway down a quiet tree-lined Lawless Road in Churchill in the Latrobe Valley, is not readily made public. The gates are high, perhaps to keep people out or perhaps to keep the monkeys in.
Primate breeding establishments and facilities are rare in Australia. Indeed, there are only two – a baboon breeding facility in outer Sydney and the National Primate Non-human Breeding and Research Facility, managed by Monash University in Victoria.
The facility's permit allows for housing of up to 850 marmoset and macaque monkeys. Very few people have seen inside. However, recently released (under Freedom of Information) Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) now give a glimpse into the lives and living conditions of the monkeys inside.
The document shows photos of cages and outdoor runs and describes the procedures for restraining monkeys and their daily maintenance. The document was released to Animal-Free Science Advocacy Inc (AFSA).
Primates are genetically the closest living creatures to humans. Their sentience, the ability to experience feelings and emotions, is very similar to ours. Studies demonstrate that they have mathematic, memory, and problem-solving skills and that they experience emotions like us, such as depression, anxiety, and joy.
Whilst the use of animals in research is a debated issue, the use of primates in research is particularly contentious. It presents the very clear ethical dilemma of using animals with high cognitive abilities, a long lifespan, and well-developed social structures.
Call for changesIt is now time to critically look at their current use, the viability of better models, the best way forward to rehabilitate and rehome them, and how to go about this.
It will take courage on the part of leaders in science and policy, but the public is likely already on board. A 2018 opinion poll reveals that 63% of those polled oppose the use of primates in experiments.
In 2022 a petition calling for a ban on primate experimentation with over 100,000 signatures was tabled in the Australian Senate. Indeed, the National Australia Bank's animal welfare lending policy includes the commitment not to fund any non-human primate testing/research.
It has been argued that primate research is essential to advance human health – a common assumption due to their close genetic relationship to humans. However, major anatomical, genetic, environmental, and immune differences make translation of results unreliable.
Systematic reviews of primate research publications indicate that the perceived benefits to humans are overstated,
and that primate models have provided disappointing contributions toward human medical advancements.
Image supplied
Facility conditionsAs evidenced in the facility's SOPs, monkeys can be separated from their family members, and they can be housed alone in a single cage for periods of time. The researchers' publications reveal that they are subjected to invasive and distressing procedures. In one experiment, a small marmoset, held in a Perspex box, is deliberately scared by a toy rubber snake placed before her. Others endure invasive brain experiments either on them or their offspring. Neonates are taken from their mothers and used to study vision, the brain and hand coordination.
In an image from the SOPs, one macaque can be seen peering out of the cage opening, waiting to be led to a procedure table, wary of what is going to happen. Others are moved while their cages are washed out.
The tight confinement of the cages, the smells and sounds of the facility combined with the constant procedures inflicted upon them take a psychological toll on these animals. The sounds of others gripping their cages, their pacing, and the coming and going of people in protective clothing add to their poor state of psychological and physiological well-being.
In the facility at Churchill, their natural instincts are suppressed. In the wild, monkeys can range widely for kilometres, but in their restricted environment, the laboratory allows them little space. The National Health & Medical Research Council does not specify cage sizes for primates in Australia. According to the SOPs, the flexagon (image supplied) is a 12m2 floor area connected to an outdoor enclosure of a 26m2 floor area.
It is a fact that the cage always remains a cage whether it is set outside or inside the laboratory building.
Life in a laboratory is no place for an animal, let alone these sentient creatures, and many spend their whole life being used for breeding, observing others coming and going, and in many cases, never to return. All will eventually die there. None are rehomed to sanctuaries.
Documents released by Monash University to AFSA revealed that one monkey (a macaque simply known as 21-C) was 23 years old when he died in the facility at Gippsland. He had become gaunt, slow and arthritic. Ear-marked as an "experimental" animal, we have no idea of the procedures he had been exposed to in his long sad life, nor how he survived the decades spent in his caged environment.
Rehabilitate and rehomeThose who advocate for animal-free science say it is time for the replacement of primate experiments with scientifically valid non-animal methods of research, and that the existing facility could and should be reverted to a primate sanctuary where the animals can live out their lives in peace.
With $1.25M of federal funding given to set up the facility originally in 2015 (by the National Health & Medical Research Council) and then the awarding of millions of dollars in grants for research projects since it is time the government gave back to those who have given so much for such little gain. It is time we funded their rehabilitation and refuge to let them live out their lives in sanctuary.
A primate sanctuary would be a place of pride for the people of Gippsland and Australia generally.
Has Australia's dingo management gone to the dogs?
Robyn is a Research Officer for the not-for-profit organisation Animal-Free Science Advocacy Inc., which advocates for scientifically valid animal-free science in research and teaching. Robyn holds a Diploma in Communication from Griffith University and has over 35 years of experience in administration in the fields of law and medicine.
PETA Pleads With NIH To Stop Funding For Animal Study, Calls Sleep Experiment 'cruel And Horrific'
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By entering your email, you are agreeing to Fox News Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive. To access the content, check your email and follow the instructions provided.People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has reached out not only to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a plea, but to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as well, asking him to help stop a planned research study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which it claims involves cruelty to animals.
The study, intended to gather information about age-related cognitive decline, involves disrupting the sleep of aged marmosets, which are small, long-tailed South American monkeys.
"As the governor of the state with the largest number of older Americans, [DeSantis] is in a unique position to condemn — before they begin — planned 'aging' experiments on tiny marmoset monkeys," PETA articulated in an email to Fox News Digital about its outreach.
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"PETA has obtained documents showing that [a research team] is going to be waking the monkeys every 15 minutes all night long by blaring loud noise at them," the email continued.
In the letter to DeSantis, which was shown exclusively to Fox News Digital, Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department, described the study as "horrific."
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) reached out to the National Institutes of Health about a planned study to take place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (shown above, left). The study will disrupt the sleep of aged marmosets in an attempt to learn more about age-related cognitive decline. PETA sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as well, hoping that he might step in as the governor of a state with "the largest number of older Americans." (iStock)
"Keeping a monkey from sleeping — considered a form of torture in humans that can ultimately result in death — won't mimic insomnia in people," she wrote.
"This proposed experiment is so cruel that it's classified by the university as what's called a 'Column E' study — meaning it causes distress and pain without any relief."
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The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is led by Agnès Lacreuse, a professor at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and will be conducted at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to records on the NIH website.
PETA sent this letter to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis asking for his help in stopping a planned study to take place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It says the Sunshine State has over 412,000 PETA members and supporters in Florida. (PETA)
PETA sent a second, more detailed letter to the NIH.
"The proposed experiments involve causing nonhuman primates irreversible harm for experiments that offer little to no new scientifically valuable knowledge or human benefit," stated the letter, which is signed by Katherine V. Roe, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department.
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Roe urged the NIH to "consider discontinuing funding for these extremely invasive experiments so that those resources can be directed toward research that could actually help our ever-growing aging population."
The study, intended to gather information about age-related cognitive decline, involves disrupting the sleep of aged marmosets, which are small, long-tailed South American monkeys. (iStock)
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Roe of PETA acknowledged that "improving the lives of the aging population in the U.S. Is of ever-increasing importance and deserves serious attention from the scientific community."
She also stated, however, "It is appalling that the NIH is wasting taxpayer funds waking marmosets up night after night in experiments that are not only cruel and unnecessary, but have no chance of improving human health."
Roe suggested that "better studies can and have been done with human volunteers."
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) corporate headquarters building in Norfolk, Virginia, in May 2023. (iStock)
"The NIH and the Wisconsin National Primate Center should be ashamed of themselves for subjecting these monkeys to maximum pain experiments under the guise of meaningful science," she added.
Michelle Ciucci, faculty director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Animal Program and professor of surgery, told Fox News Digital that researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Massachusetts-Amherst are collaborating on a study of Alzheimer's disease.
"They are focusing on the role [that] poor sleep plays in this debilitating disorder that often results in deadly complications," she said.
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Their goal, she said, is to develop a new way to study Alzheimer's.
"To better understand and combat human diseases like Alzheimer's, researchers must turn to animals to mimic complex human biology," Ciucci said.
"Nonhuman primates like marmosets share similar features of their biology with humans — in particular, their brains — and offer opportunities to study the causes of Alzheimer's and potential treatments," a faculty director and researcher told Fox News Digital. (iStock)
"Nonhuman primates like marmosets share similar features of their biology with humans — in particular, their brains — and offer opportunities to study the causes of Alzheimer's and potential treatments."
In this NIH-funded pilot study, researchers plan to disrupt the sleep of adult marmosets, a primate species that is often used in brain studies, noted Ciucci.
"To better understand and combat human diseases like Alzheimer's, researchers must turn to animals to mimic complex human biology."
"Other scientists have discovered connections between disrupted sleep and conditions including dementia and Alzheimer's, but have not yet established poor sleep as a cause of those disorders," she said.
During the course of the study, a small group of the animals will be awakened from sleep several times over the course of one night, Ciucci said.
The study will be conducted at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to NIH records. (iStock)
In later phases, they will be awakened over the course of three nights in a row.
"The animals, attended to by specially trained veterinarians in carefully managed conditions, will be awakened by sound — short tones played at about the same volume as a normal conversation or an alarm clock," she said. "The sound will be loud enough to wake the animals but not scare them."
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The researchers will track the animals' behavior, cognitive skills and other "biological indicators" to determine whether the sleep disruptions result in cognitive impairment and biochemical changes similar to those seen in human Alzheimer's patients, the researcher told Fox News Digital.
As far as why the study is classified as "Category E," Ciucci said it's possible that the sleep disruptions "may cause discomfort that cannot be addressed with typical methods like medication."
It would be "unethical and difficult" to use humans in a study to explore sleep's role in the development of a disease like Alzheimer's, researchers noted. (iStock)
"Providing medications or other means of relief would interfere with the validity of the study and its interpretations," she said.
It would be "unethical and difficult" to use humans in a study to explore sleep's role in the development of a disease like Alzheimer's, the researcher noted.
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"Until scientists understand the causes and development of Alzheimer's in a way that helps them study more treatments in humans, studying animal models of the disease remains necessary to researchers, patient advocacy organizations like the Alzheimer's Association, the public and experts at federal agencies — including the National Institutes of Health, which vetted and funded the marmoset sleep study because they consider it promising and important to public health," she added.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Gov. DeSantis' office and to the NIH requesting additional comment.
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