24 Sept 2006

Britches has made it into Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Britches was the name given by researchers to a stumptail macaque monkey who was born into a breeding colony at the University of California, Riverside in March 1985. He was removed from his mother at birth as part of a psychology experiment into maternal deprivation, and had his eyelids sewn shut as part of a three-year sight-deprivation study involving 24 infant monkeys.

Britches was removed from the laboratory, along with 700 other animals, when he was five weeks old during a raid on April 20, 1985 by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The ALF made a videotape of their raid and of Britches' condition when they found him. As a result of the publicity when the video was released by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and after condemnation of the experiments by scientists and the American Council of the Blind, eight of the 17 studies interrupted by the raid were not restarted, and the university stopped allowing baby monkey's eyes to be sewn shut, according to reports filed by the university with the government.Dr. Grant Mack, president of the American Council of the Blind, called the experiment "one of the most repugnant and ill-conceived boondoggles that I've heard about for a long time."

Source: Britches (monkey) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and you can see the video at cyrano also.