Japanese macaques are the northernmost non-human primates, famous for hot spring bathing. Their welfare in both captivity and wild populations has important considerations.
Japanese macaque welfare spans wild population management, tourist attraction conditions, and biomedical research. Wild feeding programs at tourist sites create artificial food competition and aggregation that causes subordinate animal welfare harm through increased aggression. Habituated monkeys near human settlements engage in property raiding and human conflict. Management culling of crop-damaging monkeys causes direct welfare harm and population decline in some regions. In biomedical research, macaques require rich social and environmental conditions that many research facilities struggle to provide adequately. Cultural transmission research on macaques has provided important insights into the mechanisms of animal culture, with welfare implications for how we treat these cognitively sophisticated animals.