Traumatized Baby Monkey Decries Cruelty at Primate Research Centers in Provocative Street Art

PETA-Sponsored Artwork Will Spotlight the Hidden Suffering of Monkeys at the California National Primate Research Center

For Immediate Release:
April 1, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Starting today, local residents will be confronted by images of a cowering baby monkey torn away from her mother to be imprisoned and tormented by experimenters. Colombian street artist Praxis has joined forces with PETA to plaster busy downtown streets in Sacramento and the University of California–Davis campus with thought-provoking street art demanding that the University of California’s California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) lose both its federal funding and its license to conduct experiments.

“Compassionate Davis residents should know that the UC-Davis primate center is tormenting sensitive monkeys in failed experiments,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA’s collaboration with Praxis is pushing for UC-Davis to shut down this laboratory and send the monkeys to reputable sanctuaries where they could live in peace.”

In 2021, PETA obtained federal documents revealing incompetence and neglect of monkeys at the CNPRC—including many serious incidents that violated the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Several infant monkeys died after dye meant to mark their mothers got in their mouths and eyes, and an infant rhesus macaque’s finger got stuck in her cage bars. Another infant monkey died of heat stress, and yet another was severely injured when staff placed her in the wrong outdoor enclosure and she was attacked by other stressed monkeys. Staff injected 54 titi monkeys with a vaccine that was inappropriate for their species, and three of them developed such severe complications that they had to be euthanized.

Despite decades of promises, billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of dead monkeys, the CNPRC and the country’s other six national primate research centers have failed to deliver effective vaccines against HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. In 2015, Harvard University shut down the New England Primate Research Center after controversies involving systemic neglect and mistreatment of monkeys—and PETA is calling on UC-Davis to follow suit.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.