PETA’s Giant Binoculars at Space Needle Will Offer Visitors a First Look Inside UW Monkey Labs
For Immediate Release:
April 17, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Visitors, including families who are in town for University of Washington’s admitted students weekend, looking to get a view of the city from the Space Needle will have a unique opportunity to peek inside a secretive (UW) facility on Friday, when PETA rolls out “How the Other Half Lives.” The installation features a 7.5-foot-tall pair of binoculars that in one lens shows footage of macaques thriving peacefully in their natural habitats, and in the other reveals the harrowing conditions of those trapped in laboratories—including at the school’s own Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC).
PETA’s installation debuted on the campus at UW this week and has already been seen by thousands of students. After Friday’s visit to the Space Needle, it will be back on UW’s campus again next week, and then will travel to the other six National Primate Research Centers—federally funded facilities that have killed hundreds of thousands of monkeys while absorbing billions of taxpayer dollars for cruel, ineffective, and deadly experiments that have failed to deliver promised vaccines or cures for human diseases.
Where: Space Needle, 400 Broad St., Seattle
When: Friday, April 18, 2025, 12 noon
Why: The UW primate center has violated federal animal welfare laws dozens of times, including when a monkey was strangled to death. Others have starved, been mauled by other stressed monkeys, choked on their own vomit, had their limbs mangled, or died from uncontrolled diarrheal diseases. Recently, UW experimenter Fritzie Arce-McShane blasted a monkey with so much unauthorized radiation that his body broke down—he suffered for weeks before he was killed. At WaNPRC, monkeys have died from illnesses, injury, and neglect even before being subjected to experiments.
PETA hopes the installation will inspire change just as its namesake—an 1890 study exposing poverty in the New York tenements—did.
In their natural habitat, macaques live in complex, matriarchal societies, forging lifelong bonds, raising their young, and roaming miles each day. At night, they gather in “sleeping trees,” huddling close for warmth, safety, and companionship. But this rich existence is being wiped out. Macaque populations are plummeting, in part due to the primate experimentation industry that snatches them from the wild to feed a business filled with cruelty, disease, and death.
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 Kitsfor people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
