Psichological reaserches with animal models should be forbidden, and these scientists ought to find a real job!

I presume the scientists found a marked increase in Trump-support among the macaques most traumatized? Would fit the pattern. "Trump's right not to help Puerto Rico, especially with all these foreign macaques pouring in from the lots of ocean around this foreign nation-state that somehow weaseled its way in to permanent parasitism on mainline, mainland macaques. Only Trump really loves us--with tough love that will make us into better macaques. Make Puerto Rican Macaques Great Again!"

I remember seeing Harlow’s monkeys, donated to the local zoo in Madison after his experiments on depriving maternal needs. Easy to spot on the zoo’s monkey island, his were the catatonic ones.

It should be illegal to conduct research on these intelligent, sentient animals. Want to study trauma in humans? Sadly there are many traumatized humans to work with who can give their consent. Better yet, study humans to figure out how we can stop inflicting trauma on one another (and the animals that share this planet with us).

Terrific reporting/writing. Very angering that we have the resources to send our military might steaming toward a politically-motivated, made-up "conflict," but are content to let our brethren in PR fend for themselves after a natural disaster. How have taxpayers in America lost all ability to direct the flow of their hard-earned money to things that matter? But at the same time, heartening that young people undertake lives of meticulous research in difficult circumstances, to help us better understand ourselves and the world. Bravo to all.

It's instructive to see what it means to use animal "models" for trauma, which is to say: inflict trauma on them deliberately, to cull entire troops before and after the storm (it's called genocide when it's done to humans remember?), to buy and sell them as if they were mere things. All in the service of knowledge, so of course it's the noble thing to do right?

Apparently we're running short of humans to talk to about their response to traumatizing events. Who knew.

PTSD diagnosis and constraint by standard definitions,time relatedness and geographically and historically determinants. In other words sometimes never recognized and sometimes never accepted as such not because lacking knowledge but because denying what happened at administration level. Archives non accessible or “disappeared “...

"Two sat on the naked branch of a tree, sporadically mating." it's all sporadic mating eating thinking too but death is steady

So, class, what have we learned? That rhesus monkeys, a close relative of humans, reacts to traumas just like humans do. But the human evidence is totally anecdotal (people are nicer to one another at traffic intersections).the monkey evidence is a few signs that troop coherence is breaking down. I don’t know how much money is being spent on this experiment, but it would be better spent on cleaning up the shocking devastation remaining unaddressed in Puerto Rico. If Trump or Bolton decide they want to station 120,000 American troops in the Middle East, they should be stopped and the cost devoted instead to getting Puerto Rico fixed. BTW, they are giving the monkeys food and water, but they need to install some form of shade similar to that covering the island before the hurricanes. God knows they have the materials. The need for this trumps the scientists’ need for WIFI. We are responsible for the welfare of these monkeys.

Honestly , this article both intrigues me and worries me. I am a survivor of multiple trauma, including family trauma that involved alcoholism and suicide, nearly dying in Vietnam, great poverty, and watched the destruction as family dynamics destroyed lives. So sure, more research can do nothing but help. Still, why spend even one dollar on primates? What helped me was intelligent attention and talk therapy, stuff that is expensive and beyond the reach of most poor people. Stop the monkey research, listen to those of us who are the experts in how trauma destroys lives and hopes, and stop seeing this all as some dark mystery, like Quantum Mechanics. Trauma is easy to see and is all around us. Just go to a prison and offer to listen. Go to a mental hospital, or a rescue mission. I lived for over five years in a local Rescue Mission around hundreds of men who had been hollowed out by trauma. No one ever asked them a damn thing, and most died very young. Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon

Do I understand correctly that no new macaques introduced since initial 409 brought in 1938? Such as to vary the bloodline.

Why not study humans? Or do the scientists want to things with monkeys they could never do with humans - likely inflicting more trauma. What they need from humans is to be left alone.

This was horrifying to read. These monkeys exist on a desolate island for the sole purpose of human curiosity under the guise of scientific advancement. Why aren't these poor creatures sterilized and allowed to die off naturally? Haven't they suffered enough?

There are still thousands of human beings suffering from the physical and psychological effects of the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and other locations. It is often quite a stretch to attempt to generalize findings from animal research to humans. Further, and to state the obvious: we can communicate with humans but not with monkeys, so the quality of data obtained from doing research on the human victims of hurricanes would be substantially higher and more relevant than anything we might learn from studying monkeys.

Thanks for an informative and interesting article. I hope the author/NYT will do a follow up in a year or two on what the research about the monkeys and PTSD finds. Could be very helpful for the people struggling with PTSD in the context of disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, etc.