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Science

Space Chimps Retire 25

Posted by Hemos from the moing-on-in-life dept.
jukal writes ""With a $3.7-million grant and a court ruling, Florida's Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care last week took over a primate-testing facility in New Mexico that houses 266 lab chimps, including 16 Air Force animals descended from the first space chips.", read the rest at Discovery."
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Space Chimps Retire More

Space Chimps Retire

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  • I hope that these New Mexico chimps aren't forced to move from their comfy homes in NM and go to Florida. I'm sure PETA will be up in arms over this! Oh, the inhumanity!

    • Re:Forced migration? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bgins ( 446545 )
      This is about confinement, isolation, and deprivation (of things to do). Not a nice prospect for an up to 50 years lifespan. It is indeed very sad.

      I recall an account of how some "primitive" (African tribal) people, when imprisoned, committed suicide or died of no apparent reason. The account I read was in Marie-Louise von Franz but may well have come from Laurens van der Post (1 [isbn.nu] 2 [amazon.com]). Supposedly they thought that they had lost their soul and so had nothing more to live for.

      I guess chimps are perhaps fortunate or at least different in that they don't experience a "loss of soul". I wonder whether any of them have died in captivity for no apparent medical reason: if they had, it might show a frightening similarity between chimps and humans, i.e. that chimps' "consciosness" is closer to humans than we think. Of course, I am NOT condoning this kind of cruelty!!

    • Ok, I know you're just trolling, but for all of those folks out there for whom this is your subconscious knee-jerk reaction, go out and pick up this book: Next of Kin [animalnews.com] written by Roger Fouts, one of the bigwigs at the above mentioned chimp rescue squad [savethechimps.org]. Even if you aren't into that type of thing it's a fun read and I guarantee you'll come away with a different perspective on chimps (and animal testing labs).

  • Why retire ? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess they could still find a job as slashdot editors ?

  • In other news... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Fyz ( 581804 )
    ... The Florida Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care purchased the largest amount of typewriters from an undisclosed source ever, shortly before they announced that they were indeed attempting to write the greatest book, *ever*. (sorry, it was just so obvious)
    • Inside sources reveal that the ape sweathouse is working on a script for FOX's remake of Return to the Planet of the Apes. This is double the number of talentless, smelly simians as were used to hammer out script for the first, Tim Burton directed, PoA remake.
    • So is it time for the obligatory "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" comment?
    • I thought that they were working on movies [archive.org] instead.

      After all, chimps have been writing books, and coding for a long time. They need to move on to something new...

  • Glad they can now retire (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Vuzz ( 576358 )
    I'm always outraged when I get to hear these types of stories about mistreated animals. I can't help thinking that if they were humans, they would have been rescued a long time ago... Just animals some would say. It does not make it less painful because they are "just animals". Whether it is toward animals or humans, cruelty remains cruelty. Period. I, for one, am very glad to know there are still people who care enough to rescue these poor chimps among which some have risk their lives so we can go headed with the space program. What was their reward? A tiny cage and some chimps chow... It's just my personal opinion and I don't expect everyone to share it. V.
    • Would you kill a chimpanzee if doing so would give you the knowledge needed to save a child from leukemia? How about 3 million children then? Medical and scientific researchers are human beings. They do in fact name their higher research subjects such as chimps. Rabbits aren't so lucky, but chimps are generally not mistreated for cruelty's sake. Higher animals such as pigs, chimps, bonobos, orangutans, horses, etc are generally well treated in research labs. Their lives are not deliberately wasted. Obviously there would be no scientific value in deliberately killing an animal with a known cause. Sometimes they are killed in order to complete the research with an autopsy, but even this is done painlessly. Nobody out there is injecting 500ccs of household bleach into a chimp to see if it kills him. Research in these animals is more similar to injecting a chimp with 4cc of a supposedly safe substance in order to find the largest safe exposure level. Chimps in these experiments are fed a varied diet of bananas, carrots, breads, meats etc. In order to reduce the effects of the confinement. It protects the experiment from unknowns. They're not kept in tiny cages in most labs. They're certainly worse off when some enviro-animal rights terrorist burns down their lab, drops them off in some more wild habitat and abandons them. I've seen clusters of white rabbits huddling in fear in the open near a highway because some eco-goof decided that they had magically become wild creatures. The poor rabbits had no idea what to do. The coyotes, cars, and owls picked them off. That was wonderful especially because several of these animals carried diseases. Diseases that may not be common in that area of the country yet. Brilliant wackos.
  • "Maybe we should finally tell them that the monkeys we sent into space came back super-intelligent!"

    "No, I don't think we'll be telling them that."

  • To know any of the long term effects on humans/(close genetic cousins) to know how colonies might fare on the moon (or man made orbital installations) in the future.

    We will do it some day, might as well have some research data now.

  • If they're retiring all the space-monkeys, how are we ever going to accidentally create a planet ruled by highly evolved apes?

    Or is this a pre-emptive move from somebody who took planet of the apes too seriously....?
  • There was a movie called Project X that had exactly this plotline. Wierd. You remember, Ferris Beuller was in that one.

  • Fellow Linux lovers, this is our chance.

    Yes, dear devout followers of the Penguin, now is our historical opportunity to prove, once and for all, that 200 monkeys banging on 200 keyboards can produce a better OS than Windows 2000!

    We need to send them keyboards now. What's their address?

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