Rhesus macaques are among the world's most adaptable primates, thriving in human-dominated landscapes, but face welfare challenges from urban conflict, trapping for research, and increasing persecution.
Rhesus macaques used in biomedical research experience the welfare costs of captivity and experimental procedures. Their social and cognitive sophistication means that isolation housing - common in research settings - causes significant psychological harm. Urban macaques captured and relocated lose their social group and familiar territory. Culled urban macaques - killed as nuisance animals - die from shooting or trapping. The enormous contribution of rhesus macaques to human medicine (polio vaccine, HIV research, COVID vaccines) was built on individual animal suffering that remains ongoing. The welfare obligations created by this contribution include investment in alternatives that reduce the need for macaque use and the highest possible welfare standards in facilities that use them.