Nick Nack Should’ve Been Free to Do All This—Instead, He Was Driven Mad in a Lab

This video is a must-see—just look at the difference between what a monkey called Nick Nack deserves and what he actually endures every day:

As a baby, rhesus macaque Nick Nack should have been cherished by his family and other troop members—he should’ve spent a year being nursed by his mother, staying by her protective side. Instead, he was born in captivity and likely torn away from his mother within a few months. He never got to know his family.

Now, as a young male macaque, Nick Nack should be free to band together with other males his age—if he were free, he and his friends would forage for food, fend off predators, and build relationships with new monkeys.

This powerful video shows macaques living in their natural home doing all that and more, and it contrasts their lives with the way Nick Nack has been forced to exist—imprisoned and alone.

The differences are heartbreaking.

At the time this video was recorded, Nick Nack was entering his prime, but all he knew was a metal cage that he barely had room to turn around in. He had no friends to groom with—he didn’t even have the opportunity to decide what to do with his days. All he could do was stare into a corner and incessantly bounce up and down, stiff-legged—a sign that he’s in extreme psychological distress.

Monkeys like Nick Nack need us to save them from National Institutes of Health (NIH) animal experimenter Elisabeth Murray.

In her government laboratory, Murray saws open her victims’ skulls and injects toxins to burn brain cells or suctions out parts of the brain. She then places the monkeys in a small cage and deliberately provokes their worst fears with fake spiders and snakes, just to see how they’ll react. When she’s through with them, she kills them. And she does it all with millions of your tax dollars.

For Nick Nack, We Must #ShutDownMonkeyLabs

In the past 13 years alone, Murray’s laboratory has received more than $36 million in taxpayer money—our money—for these “emotional responsiveness” tests. So while we wait for cures for deadly diseases, NIH is sucking out parts of monkeys’ brains and then scaring them with “snakes” and “spiders.”

Click below to urge NIH to shut down this horrific laboratory; redirect the funds to superior, non-animal research methods that actually benefit humans; and retire all surviving monkeys to sanctuaries.