The purpose of this project was to develop an assessment procedure for evaluating psychological well-being in a large population of individually housed monkeys. The developmental phase consisted of two parts 1) determining the variables to be measured and 2) establishing the procedure by which the data would be collected. We constructed a check sheet to measure general temperament and abnormal behavior. Each monkey's temperament was characterized as friendly, timid-fearful, aggressive, passive, or other. Abnormal behavior included locomotor stereotypies (pacing, bouncing, rocking etc.) and nonlocomotor stereotypies (self-biting, grasping, hair pulling etc.). An ill-being measure was derived from this information based on the number and severity of abnormal behaviors displayed by each monkey. Monkeys that routinely exhibited self-injurious behavior (SIB) were classified as having some disorder or illness. These animals were placed on a twice-weekly monitoring program and exposed to several different treatments. In the second part, we established a procedure for carrying out the evaluations. At issue in large facilities with a constantly changing monkey population is how to rate monkeys accurately in the least time consuming manner. Although caretakers have daily exposure to the animals under their care, they may not have the training to evaluate behavior fully. On the other hand, most large facilities have only one or two behaviorally trained staff members (e.g., enrichment coordinator) who alone cannot accurately rate all the individually housed monkeys in a facility. To make use of the experience of the caretakers and the expertise of the behavioral staff, we designed a thrice-yearly procedure in which behaviorally trained staff interviewed the animal caretakers about each of the animals under their care. The use of interviews resulted in information that was standardized across different caretakers; it also produced an increased awareness of abnormal behavior by the caretaking staff. The results of three successive assessments (4 months apart) on individually housed monkeys at NERPRC are listed below. As noted in Table 1, rhesus monkeys showed more abnormal activity both in terms of frequency and intensity than squirrel monkeys. As noted in Table 2, the most common temperament for macaques was passive, followed by friendly, then aggressive, with the least common temperament being fearful. In the subgroup of rhesus monkeys displaying SIB, the incidence of the aggressive temperament was higher than for the normal group. TABLE 1 Assessment Results for Individually Housed Monkeys across three evaluation periods. (note that the subject population varies somewhat from one period to the next) DATE S00 N SIB & Slfbite Other abnor Norm Winter 1995 M. mulatta M. fascicul. S. sciureus 241 69 51 20% 15% 0% 28% 13% 8% 52% 72% 92% Spring 1995 M. mulatta M. fascicul. S. sciureus 264 48 47 13% 21% 0% 35% 10% 9% 52% 69% 91% Fall 1995 M. mulatta M. fascicul. S. sciureus 249 51 43 14% 21% 0% 24% 14% 10% 62% 65% 90% Table 2 Temperament of monkeys with and without SIB (data from fall assessment; SIB = monkeys rated as showing SIB on all 3 assessments. NORMAL = monkeys rated as normal on all 3 assessments.) TEMPERAMENT SIB NORMAL Aggressive Passive Friendly Fearful Other 40% 36% 16% 4% 4% 18% 40% 28% 1% 13% TOTAL Number 25 213
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