X-Message-Number: 18184 Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 07:03:01 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #18178 - #18183 Hi everyone! Since Mike spoke up about monkeys as experimental subjects I feel I must add a bit to what he said. First, there are many different species and the fact that one species is hard to handle doesn't say much about another. I actually had a monkey (a South American woolley monkey, female to be exact) when I was a grad student in Chicago. She was NOT especially difficult so long as there was space for her; they can be housetrained but I will have to say that I gave up on that after a while. I kept her in a very large cage, and let her out when I was at home only. She slept at the foot of my bed. The housetraining problem came from the fact that she could not hold it in long enough to get to her cage if she was far away in the apartment: she'd run to her cage but break down halfway there. Someday I'd like to have a pair, but in a much larger house so that I could give them an entire room. The problem when she was out of her cage was that she was neverendingly curious, wanting to look into everything. Since she had no idea how to handle things, generally something would get broken. Hence the cage. There is one feature that they have that may become increasingly important for cryonics: their brains are more like ours than any other animal. I'd say that that feature will eventually make them very useful subjects. And if we choose the right species of monkey then I think we'd have one that would not be so difficult. I say this to expand on what Mike said, not to disagree with it. There are monkeys which are too awkward to handle experimentally, and they should not be chosen. Yes, they also differ in intelligence but I'd say that the difference is not so great that only a few kinds would work. Best wishes and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18184