Today's blog comes from something I read about in a book that turned out to be based on facts and seemed odd enough to put out there.
In 1973 Charles River Laboratories (a subsidiary of Bausch & Lomb) bought Loggerhead Key in the Florida Keys. They renamed it LOIS Key (Laboratory Observing Island Simians) and released 1,500 rhesus monkeys on the 100 acre key (at this point I want to say"There is no wrong way to eat a rhesus"...oh,wait that is Reeses!) The animals are used for biomedical research by pharmaceutical firms and government agencies for testing vaccines and drugs. Then things really went dramatically downhill. The monkeys were brought fresh water and a half ton of Purina monkey chow daily,but whether from boredom or maybe an acquired taste they systematically ate all of the red mangroves which are protected in Florida and vital to the eco-system. They had also overlooked another factor,that the feces would cloud the water and perhaps kill the coral reef. As I understand it the courts decided that the monkeys had to be rounded up within the next 20 years (starting in 1991?) and the key was given to the state,which since it was pretty much a barren wasteland wasn't much of a gift.
In 1973 Charles River Laboratories (a subsidiary of Bausch & Lomb) bought Loggerhead Key in the Florida Keys. They renamed it LOIS Key (Laboratory Observing Island Simians) and released 1,500 rhesus monkeys on the 100 acre key (at this point I want to say"There is no wrong way to eat a rhesus"...oh,wait that is Reeses!) The animals are used for biomedical research by pharmaceutical firms and government agencies for testing vaccines and drugs. Then things really went dramatically downhill. The monkeys were brought fresh water and a half ton of Purina monkey chow daily,but whether from boredom or maybe an acquired taste they systematically ate all of the red mangroves which are protected in Florida and vital to the eco-system. They had also overlooked another factor,that the feces would cloud the water and perhaps kill the coral reef. As I understand it the courts decided that the monkeys had to be rounded up within the next 20 years (starting in 1991?) and the key was given to the state,which since it was pretty much a barren wasteland wasn't much of a gift.
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