Majikthise

Shrub poisoned zoo monkeys

Rabbit writes:

In other Chicago news, the Chicago Tribune's headline today was "Shrub poisoned zoo monkeys." My first thought: "Now he's finally stooped too low."

Primate research ethics vs. chimeraphobia

I thought this article was going to be about the ethical challenges of conducting medical research on higher primates: Ethicists Offer Advice for Testing Human Brain Cells in Primates. You know, the behaviorally complex, sentient, endangered ones. The ones some people suspect of having, like, intrinsic value and stuff.

Good, I thought. This is a public discussion that is long overdue. Higher primate research is on of the most interesting and most neglected topics in bioethics. Abortion and euthanasia are easy compared to the ethics of invasive medical research on chimps.

The ethics of higher primate research are at the intersection of philosophy of mind, applied ethics, and environmental ethics. What kind of mental lives do these creatures have? How does their psychology relate to their moral status? How important is medical progress compared to environmental conservation? (For the record, I believe that experimentation on chimpanzees and other higher primates can be morally justifiable under exceptional circumstances, i.e., if there's absolutely no other way to test a promising treatment for a terrible human disease.)

Unfortunately, this article doesn't directly address any of the interesting aspects of primate research. Instead, it's another chimera-watch.

If stem cells ever show promise in treating diseases of the human brain, any potential therapy would need to be tested in animals. But putting human brain stem cells into monkeys or apes could raise awkward ethical dilemmas, like the possibility of generating a humanlike mind in a chimpanzee's body.

No such experiments are planned right now. But in a paper today in the journal Science, a group of scientists and ethicists is advising researchers to exercise care with such experiments, particularly if they should lead to a large fraction of a chimpanzee's brain's being composed of human neurons.

The group, led by Ruth R. Faden, a biomedical ethicist at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledged the view that monkeys and apes should not be experimented on at all, but nevertheless considered what kinds of research should be permitted if the experiments were required by regulatory authorities.

Here is the policy review that inspired the news item:

Mark Greene, Kathryn Schill, Shoji Takahashi, et al. Moral Issues of Human-Non-Human Primate Neural Grafting. Science, Vol 309, Issue 5733, 385-386 , 15 July 2005. Full text [Subscribers].

The original article is thoughtful but unexciting. It's a 2-page essay written by a committee of philosophers who don't have the space to pursue any specific empirical or conceptual arguments in detail. The authors acknowledge that it's unlikely but nevertheless conceivable, that neural grafting could alter the mental status of non-human primates in morally relevant ways.

It seems somewhat far-fetched to be worrying about engrafting a few human neurons into an overwhelmingly ape brain. Frankly, it strikes me as perverse to focus on the conceptual possibility that non-human primates might become even more sentient than they already are when the great apes may already be sentient enough to merit serious moral consideration in their own right.

Thieves seize infant monkey

In capes, no less...

Baby Monkey Stolen From Primate Expert's Florida Home

MIAMI -- Three masked men in capes stole a baby owl monkey Thursday from the home of a primate expert, police said. [AP]

Via Monkeywire.

Shoddy monkey discovery coverage

The good news: a new species of monkey is now known to science.

The bad news: Reuters is falsely reporting that "The highland mangabey is <b>the first new species of monkey identified in 20 years</b> and conservationists immediately said the find showed how important it was to preserve African forests." 

In fact, scientists identified the Arunachal macaque for the first time in December 2004, and not one but two new species of titi monkey were identified in 2002.

Poisonous primates

If there were a contest for cutest venomous creature the slow loris would win hands down (or elbows out, as the case may be).

The slow loris secretes a toxin from sebaceous glands located in crooks of its elbows. When a loris is fixing to bite, it first coats its own teeth in the poison. If a mother slow loris has to leave her babies unattended she will slick them down with poison to protect them from predators in her absence.

Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry a toxicologist and doting loris foster dad explains:

Having worked extensively with the lorises for the last couple years I am absolutely smitten with them. However, while they have the face of those cute and cuddly gremlins, they have the attitude of the evil, after-midnight flipside. With disproportionately huge and sharp canine teeth (very fang-like) and powerful jaw muscles their bites alone can be absolutely agonising. However, the pain is compounded by factors beyond the simple tissue trauma caused by the mechanical damage from the powerful jaws. The lorises are actually toxic! On the inside of their elbows, sebaceous tissue secretes a toxin (like sweat pores, which is rather fitting since the toxic mixture smells remarkably like sweaty socks). The lorises take it into their mouth and deliver it in the bite. It is not the upper and lower jaw vampire like canine teeth that deliver this toxin. It is the innocuously small teeth in the front of the lower jaw which slope forward and help conduct the saliva into the wound.

Via Monkeyfilter.

SWAT team may add monkey

You know he's got his eye on the movie rights...

Mesa police want to add monkey to SWAT team
Associated Press
Apr. 16, 2005 03:10 PM

MESA, Ariz. - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. [Ed: Where does that leave humans?] The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.

The monkey, which costs $15,000, is what Truelove envisions as the ultimate SWAT reconnaissance tool.

Since 1979, capuchin monkeys have been trained to be companions for people who are quadriplegics by performing daily tasks, such as serving food, opening and closing doors, turning lights on and off, retrieving objects and brushing hair.

Truelove hopes the same training could prepare a monkey for special-ops intelligence.

Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.

It has been a little over a year since Truelove filed a grant proposal with the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and he is still waiting for word.

If the grant goes through, Truelove plans on learning how to train the monkey himself and keeping the sociable monkey at home, just like a K-9 officer would. He projects that $85,000 in grant money would outfit the monkey with gear and pay for veterinarian care, food and habitat for three years.

How many species of primates do we endanger?

Twenty-five, according Milk River Blog.

650K to name adorable new* species

I knew I was going to get outbid.

(*Tenure of said, heretofore unnamed adorable species almost certainly exceeds that of H. sapiens.)

[Via the tenacious Loren B.]

Gorillagate

Gorilla Foundation rocked by breast display lawsuit
Former employees say they were told to expose chests

Two former employees of the Gorilla Foundation, home to Koko the "talking" ape, have filed a lawsuit contending that they were ordered to bond with the 33-year-old female simian by displaying their breasts.

Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller, both of San Francisco, are taking on the Woodside nonprofit and its president, Francine "Penny" Patterson. [San Francisco Chronicle]

NY art show closed over Bush monkey portrait

Bush Monkeys,' a painting by 23-year-old artist Christopher Savido of President Bush, hangs at the Animal gallery on New York City's Lower East Side, December 13, 2004. The portrait of Bush using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression. Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters. [Full story]