'Living' in Fear and Denied Everything Natural and Meaningful to Them

PPI confined monkeys with other stressed and sometimes apparently incompatible pen-mates for months. The severe psychological stress of being imprisoned and given virtually nothing to do likely contributed to fights among monkeys. With no escape, subordinate monkeys probably lived in constant terror as they feared being violently handled by PPI staff or attacked by other monkeys. Dozens of reports documented that the monkeys were attacked, were held down and mounted, and had open wounds and extensive hair loss.

One monkey, named Loretta by the witness, was left penned with the monkeys who had injured and apparently terrified her for more than 22 weeks, despite at least 23 written and verbal reports to PPI staff that the monkey was being attacked and that her face was frequently lacerated; that she appeared to be afraid of the other monkeys in the enclosure; and that she had extensive hair loss.

Some monkeys were confined alone to bleak metal cages from which they were unable to touch other monkeys. Locked in isolation and denied the companionship of other monkeys, which is crucial to their mental and physical health—just as it is to ours—some of these psychologically distressed monkeys rocked back and forth and paced in circles.

Dr. Stacy Lopresti-Goodman, an associate professor of psychology at Marymount University who studies abnormal behavior and psychopathologies in primates, wrote, “[N]on-human victims of traumatic entrapment live in a chronic state of fear and anxiety, given the unpredictable schedule of abuses from their captors. This is evident in the video of the monkeys that I reviewed. These situations can often result in the development of abnormal …, stereotypic …, or self-injurious behaviors. Individuals engage in these behaviors as a way to cope with stress and anxiety.”

Caged monkeys frequently huddled in groups. Dr. Barbara J. King, chancellor professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary, a biological anthropologist with expertise in primate behavior, and a former Guggenheim fellow, wrote, “For someone like me who has studied social behavior of monkeys in the wild, [this video is] disturbing to watch. Under normal or even semi-normal conditions, monkeys derive comfort from physical contact with each other, and typically relax in each other’s embrace. What we see here instead are monkeys who are highly anxious despite contact comfort, which points to extremely high stressors in their environment. Their limbs remain tense and their facial expressions reveal anxiety. In addition, the environment is horribly sterile and it is likely the animals were uncomfortably cold” [emphasis added].