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Area of Science:

  • Primate behavior and welfare
  • Animal husbandry in research settings
  • Social housing models

Background:

  • Continuous full contact pairing of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) is often unfeasible in biomedical research.
  • Alternative social housing strategies are needed to maintain primate welfare.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To evaluate if frequent separation or adjacent housing with tactile contact impacts the behavioral benefits of continuous full contact in rhesus macaques.
  • To compare the behavioral effects of single, full contact, intermittent contact, and protected contact housing.

Main Methods:

  • Behavioral data were collected over 1260 hours from 32 female and 16 male rhesus macaques across two research centers.
  • Subjects were housed in four conditions: single, full contact pair, intermittent contact pair, and protected contact.
  • Each pair experienced the three social housing conditions in a counterbalanced order.

Main Results:

  • Full and intermittent contact housing reduced abnormal and anxiety-related behaviors in females, with a trend in males.
  • Protected contact housing showed fewer behavioral benefits compared to full and intermittent contact, with increased inactivity and reduced affiliation.
  • Males housed in intermittent contact showed higher agonistic behavior than those in protected contact.

Conclusions:

  • Frequent separation does not diminish the behavioral advantages of pair housing for rhesus macaques.
  • Intermittent contact housing offers significant behavioral benefits over single housing and is comparable to full contact.
  • Protected contact housing is less beneficial than other social housing methods but still superior to single housing.