Jungle Panels!

Looks like a monkey forest in South-East Asia? You'd be mistaken! These are some of the new panels I recently installed in our animal facility. About a year ago, I was awarded a grant from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) focused on the three R's: reduction, replacement, and refinement. The three R’s describe an ethical framework that we always keep in mind whenever animals are used in (neuro)scientific research.

While reduction and replacement often dominate the conversation, I think it's just as crucial to focus on refinement: giving the rhesus monkeys in our facility the best possible lives. With this grant, I decided to give them something more interesting to look at than a white wall. The entire 30 x 3 metre wall of our facility is now a jungle! Along with other landscapes that resemble the habitats rhesus monkeys inhabit in the wild (even though these individuals themselves are not wild-born). The opposite wall is made up of windows, so at least they could already look outside on that side and catch some sun.

I'm thrilled that a company came in to install these panels, with the monkeys eagerly watching the whole process unfold. The result is gorgeous, and I'm now waiting for a sophisticated moveable device with touchscreens to arrive from Germany, in which the monkeys can sit and voluntarily take part in little mini-games from the comfort of their own homecage. These highly cognitive animals deserve nothing less!