Survival, growth, health, and reproduction following nursery rearing compared with mother rearing in pigtailed monkeys (Macaca nemestrina)

Abstract

Nursery-reared primates do not experience psychological "maternal bonding" or immunological benefits of breast milk, so they are expected to be inferior to mother-raised monkeys in growth, health, survival, reproduction, and maternal abilities. Studies of nursery-reared monkeys support aspects of this prediction for infants deprived of social contact or raised in pairs. We present colony record data on 1,187 mother and 506 nursery-raised monkeys, 2-10 yr of age, living in mixed groups. We found no group differences in survival, growth, clinical treatments for disease or bite wounds, or pregnancy outcome and neonatal deaths. Nursery males given breeding opportunities produced an average of 24 offspring. In addition to 24-hr personnel present on every day of the year, we believe that three of our procedures account for differences between our results and other reports. Our infants received 1) intensive human handling, 2) daily social interaction in a playroom, and 3) success and failure experience during learning and cognitive testing. We do not advocate rearing primates without mothers, but we conclude that these procedures are sufficient for producing physical health and adaptive juvenile and adult social skills in nursery-raised monkeys.

Prenatal Cord Clamping in Newborn <i>Macaca nemestrina:</i> A Model of Perinatal Asphyxia

“…The nonhuman primate is valuable because complex behavior more comparable to that of humans can be tested. Such neurodevelopmental assessments have been developed and validated in the Infant Primate Laboratory of the University of Washington Primate Center [47] . Ideally, therapies should be founded on data derived from both in vitro and in vivo approaches, with nonhuman primates used as the penultimate preclinical step [46,48,49] .…”

A two years longitudinal study of a transgenic Huntington disease monkey

“…After delivery, they were surrogate-nursery reared in the primate nursery of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (YNPRC; Atlanta, GA) according to procedures developed by Sackett and colleagues [21] that allow normal growth as well as the development of species-specific social skills. These procedures included daily social interactions with peers, intensive human contacts, and cognitive testing that began in the first weeks of life and continued through adulthood (for additional details on rearing conditions, see Goursaud and Bachevalier, [22]).…”

Baboon Nursery Rearing Practices and Comparisons between Nursery-Reared and Mother-Reared Individuals

“…From our relational survey it is not possible to clearly identify causative factors in the long-term negative consequences of nursery rearing. However, in a comprehensive study of 1187 mother-and 506 nursery-reared pigtailed macaques between 2 and 10 years of age, Sackett et al (2002) found no differences in survival, growth, health, or reproduction between the two groups. The nursery-reared monkeys in that study received intensive human handling, and daily playroom socializa- tion with peers, and were exposed to learning and cognitive tests.…”