Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! S. A. E. N. "Exposing the truth to wipe
out animal experimentation"
Resources and Links
Facility Reports and Information
Duke University, Durham, NC
REPORT SUBJECT
Administering Electric Shocks to a Lemur
"This lab performed animal experiments involving pain or distress but no analgesics, anesthetics or pain relievers were administered."
To view footage again, please select
the "refresh" button on your computer.
This is "non-invasive" only by comparing
it to the protocols where devices are bolted to the skull
and the primates are confined to restraint chairs.
But then this project does much less, it
does not monitor brain activity. It only allows you to see
what a lemur sees. It is similar to a helmet cam in
football.
In addition, the lemur has to carry
something that is about 1/4 of his/her body weight all the
time.
Behavioral and neurophysiological studies suggest that visual
orienting reflects the integration of sensory, motor, and motivational
variables which depend on behavioral goals. Relatively little is known
about the behavioral goals governing visual orienting in natural
conditions, in part because accurate gaze-tracking technology has not
been employed in field studies. To address this issue, we have
implemented a telemetric infrared video gaze-tracking system (ISCAN) to
record overt visual orienting in primates moving freely in naturalistic
environments.
In one set of experiments, we have begun to measure
visual orienting in medium-sized prosimian primates at the Duke
University Primate Center. In these studies, a single lemur subject has
been trained to wear the gaze-tracking device while freely moving
through a relatively large 3-dimensional environment. The first video
shows the subject animal licking his foot and then leaping to a box on
the wall of the enclosure.
The next two video clips display the scene visible
from the lemur's head, with the crosshair indicating direction of gaze.
In these clips, the animal attempts to avoid his handler by leaping
through a small window separating halves of the enclosure. The first of
these two clips is in real-time, while the second is slowed for clarity:
Note the extent to which gaze predicts the lemur's route through its
environment. These experiments provide the first measurement of visual
orienting in a freely-moving animal, as well as the first quantitative
measurements of the eye movements of Lemur catta.
Rats, mice, birds, amphibians and other animals have
been excluded from coverage by the Animal Welfare Act. Therefore research
facility reports do not include these animals. As a result of this
situation, a blank report, or one with few animals listed, does not mean
that a facility has not performed experiments on non-reportable animals. A
blank form does mean that the facility in question has not used covered
animals (primates, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, pigs,
sheep, goats, etc.). Rats and mice alone are believed to comprise over 90%
of the animals used in experimentation. Therefore the majority of animals
used at research facilities are not even counted.
