NEWTON
April 5, 2000 - July 1, 2024
Newton was spunky and eccentric. He walked in a robust manner, knocking over toys in his path. He had beautiful, with wispy hairs on his cheeks. Newton loved exploring his numerous enclosures and digging in the dirt outside. He would always go for enrichment first over anything, even food! He loved to tear things apart to discover what was inside. We are so grateful to have given him nearly two decades of life in a sanctuary.
Newton had been used in biomedical research. He was sentenced to be disposed of when he was 4 years old because he was no longer useful for a research study. They suspected he had glaucoma and thus could not be used for their eye research at Queens University in Ontario. He came to Fauna in February 2005. When Fauna was originally approached by Queens to take Newton, we didn’t feel it would be okay for him to come alone. Fauna had a conversation with Queens about retiring a group of female monkeys from a study that was to be terminated indefinitely. We were misled by the lab and they only spared one other monkey, Darla, who came with Newton in 2005. Over the years we reached out many times to the lab to try to retire Darla’s friends to Fauna, but sadly it never worked. Darla died in May 2022 and since then Newton became closer with his human caregivers.
Some animal protection groups advocating for animals in labs, focus on reducing, re-using or replacing animals in research. In Newton’s case, the lab didn’t want to “re-use” him, but rather terminate him. This would mean bringing in another baby monkey to take his place. Luckily, Fauna rescued him. However, this is a tricky situation that many sanctuaries face — because rescuing one leaves the door open for another to replace him or her in the lab. NEAVS worked on replacing animals in research completely with a non-animal model. Until then, unfortunately, re-using individuals — albeit disturbing and depressing for said individual — does keep less new monkeys from entering the labs. Darla is an example of a monkey that was re-used for both the menstrual and then the anorexia studies.
