Gorillas go through menopause, too - Science - MSNBC.com

Gorillas go through menopause, too - Science - MSNBC.com

Talk about nonsense!

This AP wire story is receiving broad coverage in the US. They are overlooking some poorly planned science and ethical issues raised as a result of the authors' conclusions and comments.

First of all, they have overlooked the most important consequences of their longevity: Aging gorillas may face many more years - perhaps decades - of suffering in captivity. Inadequate space, inability to perform natural behaviors and other aspects of captivity are detrimental. Many primates imprisoned in zoos must be medicated for depression, self-mutilation and other abnormal behaviors. Instead of wondering whether gorillas have hot-flashes, we should be looking for ways to transform zoos from prisons that breed and trade animals into modern, desperately needed sanctuaries that provide for the well-being of individual animals.

Then there is this:

"The new findings argue against the so-called "grandmother hypothesis," because female gorillas in the wild migrate away from their family groups and don't hang around to care for the grandkids.

Instead of an evolutionary adaptation, menopause could result merely from humans and captive gorillas living longer," Austad said.

The new findings are about hormonal changes in captive gorillas and they have no scientific bearing on the grandmother hypothesis. The information Austad refers to has to do with wild gorillas - and it's not new information. The fact that gorillas emigrate from their natal troops is common knowledge about their natural history - nothing new. Furthermore, it's not the "grandmothers" that leave; once they are old enough to mate, gorillas of both sexes leave the group where they were born. There is no opportunity for grandparenting by either sex, and so gorillas make a poor test case for the grandmother hypothesis. We might as well use fish to study the evolution of long distance running.

If we are just going to use ape social systems as a test of the grandmother hypothesis, we sure don't need any animals in zoos to do it. The only apes who could provide grandmothering are chimpanzees and bonobos. The social systems of other apes (Pongidae and Hylobatidae) necessarily preclude this option.

Quite frankly, Austad's comments seem nonsensical. Evidence of senesence has been detected among a wide variety of species with many different reproductive and parenting strategies. A single functional explanation for menopause across species is unecessary. We would be much better off looking at menopause in the larger context of life-history than paying big bucks for gorilla hormone tests.

It's disappointing that our government paid for this study at all. Given the varied experience of menopause across cultures and among individual women, the precise nature of hormonal and behavioral changes during menopause in captive gorillas is unlikely to provide information useful in a health care context. If taxpayer money is going to be spent on gorillas, it should be to alleviate their suffering in captivity or to protect and study these highly endangered creatures in the wild, not flushed down the drain on useless zoo animal "models" of aging.

Humans do not understand mirror reflections, say researchers

Humans do not understand mirror reflections, say researchers

Given that the "mirror test" is often used to test self-awareness in nonhuman animals, I think this study is very interesting. Perhaps some "failure" by animals can be chalked up to their difficulty understanding the same concepts that the undoubtedly self-aware human subjects have trouble with? Dr. Bertamini's quote about the virtual worls we see in mirrors (at the end of the article) should offer us a reason to re-examine the mirror test as a tool for understanding self-awareness.

If the "passing" response on the mirror test requires more than basic self-awareness - say some complex philosophical view of the world that perplexes many people - then we need to work harder to find a test that can help us probe self-awareness more reliably.

Bored to distraction

The barren environment of the laboratory is associated with a number of physical and psychological pathologies among animals used in laboratory experiments. New Scientist recently reported on a lethal experiment ("Bored monkeys make for stupid monkeys" 11/19/05) demonstrated how "standard" and "enriched" environments affected adult monkeys' brains. I think that "bored" is, at best, an understatement for what these animals experienced, but I suppose word choice is the sort of thing that comes with editorial power.

I simply had to respond to the fact that the ethical implications of such experiments were sidestepped in an opinion piece printed in the most recent issue: Bored to distraction.

Non-animal methods

Microdosing and "monkey on a chip" technologies may replace live animal testing

Several "chips" have been introduced lately that allow testing of specific organs or gene activations in specific tissues in response to experimental drugs. Giving tiny, tiny doses of drugs to humans is another non-animal testing technique that many consider useful or at least promising.

This article reviews the general development of non-animal testing methods (from a UK perspective).

Scientific integrity. Who is responsible when things go wrong?

What should we do when practitioners ignore ethical standards in animal experiments? For example, if a journal has a policy that it will not print articles from experiments that cause "unnecessary pain and discomfort," how far do they have to go to ensure that such articles are not accepted? What about the people who did the experiment? Or the institution where those people work? What happens if editors and publishers later discover that there was pain and discomfort?


From the blog of the Editors of AJB: http://blog.bioethics.net/2005/12/teaching-scientific-integrity-might.html

"Science depends upon trust in the honesty and integrity of its practitioners, perhaps more than any other human endeavor. The peer-review process means that experts review the data and the methods that are reported but, ultimately, scientific articles are a form of testimony. Other scientists then attempt to repeat research results -- so that if something is fabricated it will typically be discovered over time. But oversight committees like human experimentation committees have to trust what their investigators tell them. Journals also must rely on scientists to tell the truth to them. And researchers themselves often have to rely on the honesty of their graduate students and post-doctoral students. When trust breaks down, the very possibility of science is threatened. "

Victory for nonhuman apes!

Austria announced that experimentation on nonhuman apes is banned - a crime punishable by law.

Austria was the seventh country to institute such a ban (total or partial) against experimentation on nonhuman apes.

Baby monkeys only allowed to see world through "keyholes"

Many people have heard of Harry Harlow's infamous maternal deprivation experiments performed more than 50 years ago. Babies were taken from their mothers to live with inanimate substitutes that abused (monster mothers who caused pain) or neglected ("dolls" of sorts that did nothing at all) them to the detriment of their physical and mental health. Imagine, if you can, that on top of this cruel legacy of deprivation, the babies were also subjected to experiments - nearly blinded, poked and prodded. Would you be surprised to know that these were experiments done recently and not in the 50s?


Citation: Smith EL 3rd, Kee CS, Ramamirtham R, Qiao-Grider Y, Hung LF.Peripheral vision can influence eye growth and refractive development in infant monkeys. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2005 Nov;46(11):3965-72.

Summary of the experiment: 15 baby monkeys were taken from their mothers and raised in a lab nursery. The infants were forced to wear helmets with experimental lenses. 12 monkeys had lenses with openings of just 4 (n=6) or 8 mm (n=6), i.e. “keyholes” that would effectively “white out” all peripheral vision. The helmets were put on at 3 weeks of age (that’s when they got out of their incubators) and worn until five months of age.

After the helmets were taken off, a laser was used to damage the center of the retina in one eye of 7 monkeys. All 12 keyhole monkeys had abnormal vision. 9 of 12 keyhole monkeys had extreme vision problems (outside 90th centile). For reasons that the authors could not explain, one became extraordinarily far sighted – the opposite of what is expected. Farsightedness develops when the entire eye is blurred (i.e. when there isn’t even a clear "keyhole").

There were 21 control babies who did not have to wear a helmet or have an eye damaged by a laser, but they were taken from their mothers.

Funding acknowledged in the article: National Eye Institute Grants R01 EY03611, and P30 EY70551, the Vision Cooperative Research Centre Sydney, Australia, the Greeman-Petty Professorship, and the UH Foundation

Since 2000,the National Eye Institutes have paid over 2 million dollars for these cruel experiments.

Institutional Affiliations: All authors claim joint affiliation.

• College of Optometry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas USA
• Vision Cooperative Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia