Caged ‘Primates’ to Rattle UMass Event Over Monkey Experiments
For Immediate Release:
June 3, 2025
Contact:
Brandi Pharris 202-483-7382
A larger-than-life imprisoned “marmoset” will join PETA supporters outside The New York Historical Thursday during a University of Massachusetts–Amherst (UMass) event calling on Chancellor Javier Reyes to end bizarre and pointless experiments conducted on marmosets in UMass’s Agnès Lacreuse’s laboratory. These tiny monkeys have their reproductive organs removed, wires implanted, and hot packs held against them, all so experimenters can try inducing symptoms of menopause, a condition they do not naturally experience. After years of torment, the marmosets are killed and dissected.
“While UMass leaders sip champagne, these smart, social monkeys are being caged, tormented, and killed on the UMass campus,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA calls on Chancellor Reyes to shut down Lacreuse’s twisted tests in favor of state-of-the-art, animal-free research that holds real promise and meaning.”
Where: Outside The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way, New York City
When: Thursday, June 5, 6:30 p.m.
Why: In nature, marmosets live in cooperative groups high in the canopies of rainforests, where they groom each other, huddle affectionately, share food, and care for their young. In Lacreuse’s laboratory, experimenters screw electrodes onto marmosets’ skulls, cut into their necks, deprive them of water, zip-tie them, and shove them into plastic cylinders. Many of the tests purportedly study menopause—a condition marmosets don’t naturally experience.
PETA recently urged federal officials to investigate apparent violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act at the laboratory after PETA obtained records revealing 10 marmosets confined and killed at UMass spent their final months suffering from injuries, gum infections, broken teeth, and chronic diarrhea, among other serious health problems—with no indication that staff tried to treat the conditions or investigate the causes.
Lacreuse’s experiments have squandered more than $6 million so far and earned UMass a laundry list of citations for violations of federal animal welfare regulations.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
