Inside JHU …
USDA inspectors have found numerous worrying breaches of animal welfare, including keeping monkeys separate in sterile cages and allowing them to suffer from untreated diseases.
Monkeys, usually gentle, sociable animals, were kept separately, in empty metal cages, barely large enough to turn around, and had nothing to cost their lives.
Usually social monkeys are kept in isolation at the JHU, which causes them to be unduly stressed and mind-destroying frustration, which sometimes leads to hair loss, as seen in this monkey.
The gentle monkey pictured above, who doesn’t even have a toy to distract from his relentless loneliness, suffers from alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss. The monkey can also pull out his hair due to the stress of confinement and the lack of peers with whom to engage in mutual grooming, which monkeys do in exchange for food, sex and friendship.
Another monkey, alone in a barren metal cage, also suffers from baldness along the entire length of the back, reaching the hips.
Hair loss is seen in many photographs of monkeys in JHU laboratories. Their stress levels rise dramatically in the laboratory, where extreme isolation and deprivation are interrupted only by unpredictable people who often hurt them during experiments.
This is another gentle monkey from JHU that has almost completely lost its hair. All that was left was the hair on the head and wrists.
In such harsh conditions, monkeys can suffer psychological trauma. They often walk around, pluck their own hair, and bite themselves in a desperate attempt to experience any kind of stimulation in their completely lifeless life.
Another monkey from JHU, alone in a sterile cage, suffers from hair loss.
Monkeys housed in solitary cages, as USDA inspectors photographed in JHU laboratories, tend to exhibit “stereotypical behaviors” such as repetitive movements such as gait, circling, rocking, and rocking to ease their mental anguish and try to cope with inadequate environment.
This monkey is overweight and has severe alopecia. The inspectors noted that JHU did not have a plan to treat any of these problems – she was simply left to suffer with her baby in a sterile cage.
The public needs to know what is going on behind the locked doors of JHU laboratories, where experimenters conduct crude tests on animals, often receiving taxpayer money for them. PETA is fighting to shed light on these experiments from the public. For decades, we have known that monkeys need communication, access to open spaces, and much more than a laboratory can provide.
This is another snapshot of a monkey and her baby suffering from severe alopecia, which JHU apparently ignored. There was no treatment plan for any of the monkeys.
JHU’s repeated failure to comply with AWA requirements is shameful.
The following are just a few of the JHU violations of federal animal welfare regulations noted by the USDA:
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- June 10, 2019: The monkey died after a technician closed the cage door in front of him, causing bleeding and neck injury.
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- February 15, 2017: A young macaque was found dead outdoors in an aviary. Her head was stuck inside an enrichment ball that had a hole big enough to get her entire head into it. Although the autopsy was not definitive, the institution determined that the cause of death was most likely a prolonged exposure to the cold combined with the stress of not being able to free the head.
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- July 12, 2016: The two baboon cages had aqueduct loops coming in from above, which created a possible suffocation hazard; on two racks of rabbi
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enclosures there were water nipples that did not completely enter the cages, which made it difficult for animals to access fresh water; three primates were housed alone and had no visual contact with their peers; and there were 17 cases of expired drugs.
- July 12, 2016: The two baboon cages had aqueduct loops coming in from above, which created a possible suffocation hazard; on two racks of rabbi
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- March 31, 2016: Johns Hopkins received a formal warning letter about the failure to provide psychological well-being for primates. On examination, eight primates showed significant hair loss. Some of them did not receive adequate treatment.
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- January 28, 2015: The rabbit died of suffocation after being left in a cage, which was passed through a high-temperature disinfection machine before being regularly washed.