Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY
Volume 58, Issue 2, Pages 57-69Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ajp.10052
Keywords
Macaca nemestrina; early rearing; social; vs. single-housing; self-injurious behavior (SIB); noninjurious self-abuse
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Funding
- NCRR NIH HHS [RR00166] Funding Source: Medline
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To identify factors predicting abnormal behavior in laboratory monkeys, we observed all available singly housed 4- to 11-year-old male pigtailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina), the species/age/sex group most likely to be referred to the Washington National Primate Research Center's Psychological Well-Being Program for behavioral assessment. Of the 87 subjects, 29 had been referred to the program whereas 58 had not. Abnormal behavior was unrelated to the subject's housing location (biocontainment vs. other facility) or invasiveness of research. Nursery-reared subjects displayed more abnormal behavior than mother-reared subjects. Across and within rearing categories, the proportion of the first 48 months of life spent singly housed was positively related to the amount of abnormal behavior at maturity. This effect was stronger for subjects separated from the mother for clinical rather than experimental reasons, and least for mother-reared subjects. Locomotor stereotypy, by far the most frequent form of abnormal behavior, was positively related to time in single housing but was unrelated to rearing. These results reinforce the importance of tactile social contact during juvenility for the prevention of abnormal behavior in social primates. They also suggest that self-directed abnormal behaviors and locomotor stereotypies have different etiologies. (C) 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
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