More Primates Sent to Retire at Waystation

The New York-to-Los Angeles chimp pipeline continues to flow.

The connection was established in October, when eight laboratory chimps from New York University were retired at the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit refuge located near Lake View Terrace in Angeles National Forest.

Last week, the NYU lab sent 13 more research primates--eight chimps and 5 baboons--to the Waystation.

With the exception of Spike, a 16-year-old chimp who died of liver failure shortly after his arrival with the first batch of chimps, the animals all have adapted well to their new environment and are enjoying an unprecedented level of social contact and leisure, according to Waystation founder and director Martine Colette.

The animals were kept apart from each other during research to prevent the spread of disease. For most of them, the Waystation has provided the first chance to interact with each other, Colette said.

“It doesn’t just have to do with their age,” said Dr. James Mahoney, deputy director of NYU’s Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, explaining why he decided to retire the animals.

Most of the older chimps sent to the Waystation range in age from 26 to 43, Mahoney said.

“It also has to do with when I sense it’s right for an animal to go . . . the older animals have given so much of their lives” to research, he said, that “there has to be an end, a time for them to rest.”

Most of the chimps were used to develop hepatitis vaccines, Mahoney said. The baboons, whose physiology is less similar to man’s, were used in reproductive studies and blood group immunology tests, Mahoney said.

“The new animals are settling right in,” Colette said this week. The 160-acre Waystation is conducting a fund-raising drive to pay for a new primatology center to permanently house the animals.