NHP Housing

Housing in the University of Fribourg

Since 2010, 5 groups of macaques have been living at the NHP animal facility. A group consists of a maximum of two to five animals. These groups are divided by room and by project. Each room/enclosure covers at least 45 cubic metres with a minimum height of 3 metres. Besides the interior space, each room has an exterior section reached via an individual access.

All rooms are equipped with platforms (for climbing), wooden swings, bins filled with sawdust (for foraging), giving the animals opportunities to play and to hide.

Additionally, there is a weekly enrichment program, which aims to maintain the macaques’ optimal mental state throughout the entire course of an experiment. Examples of enrichment include: foraging, feeding (e.g. finger food board, puzzle feeder), frozen fruit according to the season, pool, various toys.

NHP Housing in the University of Zürich

Currently, four adult male rhesus macaques live together in a large enclosure at the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich. Their names are Charles, Max, Paul, and Alan. Throughout most of the day, the four animals are not engaged in any experimental procedures, but rather spend their time in the primate facility foraging for food, solving food-puzzles, in interactions with each other and the animal care takers, or simply resting.

The monkeys have continuous access to two inside rooms (with a total area of 23 square meters) and an outside enclosure (34 square meters). The entire monkey facility is at least 3 meters high, and provides the animals opportunities to play, climb, jump, or hide, and is enriched with a variety of substrates, destructible items, and branches. Food is distributed or hidden across the enclosure multiple times each day, to ensure that the monkeys have to forage and work for their food, as they would in nature.