Dogs To Replace Monkeys in Lab

The Cognitive Evolution Lab in William James Hall will be switching from bananas to bones as Pyschology Professor Marc D. Hauser has decided to stop his research with cotton top tamarin monkeys to work with dogs instead.

Hauser said that the rising costs of care for the 40 tamarins that reside in the lab were getting too high—especially in the current economic climate—considering that his research is purely behavioral.

“The granting that funds behavioral work have nowhere near the kinds of budget as the funds for biomedical research,” Hauser said.

While the monkeys have been a source of controversy for animal activists, they provide a relatively rare research opportunity for Hauser’s lab, the only behavioral research lab at Harvard that uses monkeys.

He said that with only 40 monkeys in residence, the sample size for his experiments is quite small.

“Lots of the questions that I and my students have become interested in are questions that demand a different kind of species and testing environment,” said Hauser.

He said they’d gotten to a point when they needed a bigger sample size, which could be provided by dogs that, unlike monkeys, would be brought by volunteers.

“I’ve got 40 tamarins, and I can have 100 dogs,” he said.

Dogs offer other advantages besides availability—they are “incredibly attentive to humans” and will therefore listen to and obey researchers, Hauser said.

One of the driving questions of the lab is what makes human unique—what Hauser has termed “humaniqueness”.

If something initially considered to be unique to humans is found in any other species, whether that species is dog or monkeys, then that hypothesis is defeated, Hauser said.

Katherine J. McAuliffe, a graduate student in Hauser’s lab, is currently completing work on a project designed to study inequity aversion in the tamarins, which she says will be done in the few weeks before the tamarins leave.

“We’re looking for a sense of fairness,” said McAuliffe. “Do primates care if they are in a set up where another individual gets way more food than they get?”

Hasuer said that her work could potentially provide the first example of spiteful behavior in a non-human animal.

While he said he is excited about the challenges that lie ahead and the new questions he will be able to answer using dogs, he said that he has been working with the monkeys for 16 years and has gotten to know them well.

“It’s a sad moment to think this is the end of a long run,” Hauser said.

Hauser is currently working on finding sanctuaries where the tamarins can spend the remainder of their lives.

“Some will probably be an upgrade [from William James],” Hauser said, “in Florida or something like that.”

­—Staff writer Alissa M. D’Gama can be reached at adgama@fas.harvard.edu