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Pdf Monkey Rocker Plans
Luckily, if you have the tools and the skills, you can make your own DIY Monkey Rocker. The blueprints are easy to find and cost almost nothing, though they can help you create the perfect toy for your enjoyment. Building your own love rocker also saves a great deal of money, helping you stick to your budget without sacrificing the pleasure one of these handy devices can offer.
The methods used to transfer monkeys from their home enclosure to the chair vary also. Anecdotally, some laboratories use a single pole and one trainer, 2 poles and 2 trainers, a leash, and so forth. In Europe, use of the pole-and-collar system is not considered good practice and is not a recommended method of restraint.20 Some research groups use a combination of positive and negative reinforcement, but others emphasize positive techniques and elicit voluntary cooperation from the animal.36 For a procedure that is used fairly commonly throughout the NHP research community, there seems to be little discussion about the differences in equipment and methodologies used to prepare animals for research studies requiring chair restraint.
Within the academic and government sectors, monkeys were chaired mostly for neuroscience procedures, such as behavioral or cognitive testing (68 of 75 respondents), functional MRI (23 of 75), recording neural activity (55 of 75), dura scrape or chamber cleaning (46 of 75), and EMG recording (13 of 75; Figure 2). Within the contract research and pharmaceutical industry sectors, NHP were chaired mostly for toxicology and safety pharmacology procedures, such as dosing of test compounds by intravenous infusion (20 of 26) or oral gavage (14 of 26), blood sampling (20 of 26), and ECG recording (7 of 26).
The training methods used to prepare NHP for restraint procedures in the academic and government sectors were nearly always based on active, stepwise training using positive reinforcement or a combination of positive and negative reinforcement (Figure 7). Within the contract research and pharmaceutical sectors, however, approximately 1/3 of laboratories did not use stepwise training and instead placed the monkey in the chair and relied on it becoming habituated to the chair-restraint procedure over time, with very little active training.
The use of food or fluid control (or both) was common in the academic and government sectors (52 of 65 respondents) but relatively rare in the contract research and pharmaceutical sectors (7 of 25). Twelve academic laboratories in North America and one in the United Kingdom did not use food or fluid control; 10 of these were conducting behavioral or cognitive testing of the monkeys, of which 4 also involved neural recording. The 7 contract research or pharmaceutical laboratories using fluid or food control were conducting similar procedures to the laboratories in these sectors that did not use food or fluid control, namely, intravenous infusion, oral or gavage dosing, blood sampling, and ECG recording.
The average length of time used to prepare monkeys for chair restraint equipment was most often 2 to 8 wk in the academic and government sectors (44 of 59) and 1 to 2 wk in the contract research and pharmaceutical sectors (13 of 25). A total of 38 of 89 laboratories considered that their monkeys would benefit from additional preparation time for restraint procedures. A greater proportion of respondents in the contract research and pharmaceutical sectors shared this view (18 of 25) than did those in the academic and government sectors (20 of 64; χ2 = 12.201, P 0.05) or length of time used to prepare monkeys for chair restraint (χ2 = 0.4.913, P > 0.05).
When a fully trained monkey begins to regress (that is, resists or no longer cooperates with restraint procedures), this lapse was most often addressed in the academic and government sectors by giving the monkey a break in participation and providing additional time to train through the regression (33 of 78) or by continuing to use the monkey but incorporating additional time for training outside of research or testing (24 of 78). These approaches also were used in the contract research and pharmaceutical sectors, but in those settings the problem was more likely to be addressed by removing the monkey from the study (12 of 35). Eleven laboratories reported that they made the monkey participate with the restraint procedures.
The most challenging steps in preparing a naïve monkey for chair restraint within the academic and government sectors were considered to be attaching the pole to the collar, removing the monkey from the cage, and having the monkey poke its head out of the top of the box chair and keep it there (Figure 12). Within the contract research and pharmaceutical sectors, the most challenging steps were restraining the limbs or other body parts and acclimating the animal to the chair for extended periods. A total of 39 of 89 laboratories had experienced a monkey that did not acclimate to chairing procedures. This situation was most often dealt with by providing additional training before the research began (28 of 89 respondents) or removing the monkey from the study (24 of 89); some laboratories assigned a new trainer to the animal (8 of 89).
Almost half of respondents felt that the person conducting the chair restraint training experienced distress during the process (34 of 79 laboratories). Respondents who held this view were not more likely to consider that the animals also experienced distress during initial training (χ2 = 0.202, P > 0.05). However, these respondents were more likely to consider that the NHP would benefit from additional preparation time for restraint procedures (χ2 = 0.069, P 0.05) or the average length of time taken to prepare monkeys for chair restraint equipment before research procedures begin (χ2 = 5.587, P > 0.05). In all sectors, the best approach for chair training was considered to be a combination of positive and negative reinforcement (40 of 79) or solely positive reinforcement (29 of 79).
The method of transfer from the home environment into the chair is another important consideration in improving the experience of the NHP. One disadvantage of the open chair is that it requires the animal to be guided by the trainer, using the pole-and-collar method or manual handling. This process decreases the animal's control, and control and choice are considered to be important for the wellbeing of captive NHP.9,40 With the closed chair, animals can be trained to perform each of the steps necessary to transfer from the home cage to the chair and to lift its head out of the opening of the chair without the use of pole and collar. Therefore, we were surprised at the number of laboratories using the pole-and-collar method with closed chairs. Macaques can be successfully trained by using a combination of PRT and NRT to voluntarily exit the home cage and go directly into the closed chair or to enter a transport box first.4,5 Not only is this method of transfer likely to allow the animal greater perceived control, but, judging from comments submitted as part of the survey, it may also be less stressful for staff than is the use of the pole and collar. As a research community, we should move toward a more positive training experience for the monkeys used in restraint procedures, no matter what the design of the chair or the method of transfer.4,24 Therefore researchers and animal care staff should stay current with published refinement techniques and make preferential use of the most humane training methods whenever possible.
The survey results indicated that many laboratories have standard operating procedures in place to increase consistency in animal training and monitoring, which we consider to be good practice. We found that most academic and government laboratories use chair-training procedures based on PRT techniques or a combination of PRT and NRT. These techniques were generally recognized to be the best training methods for the safety of the animals and staff and for minimizing stress, which also is encouraging. Incorporating NRT is considered by our respondents to expedite training and reduce stress for staff, but there is an appreciation that NRT may not be the best approach for preparing monkeys for chair restraint. Approximately 1/3 of laboratories in the contract research and pharmaceutical industry sectors do not actively train the monkeys for cooperation with chair restraint and instead rely on the animals gradually becoming accustomed to the procedures through repeated exposure, although some groups may also desensitize by using food rewards. We recommend more prestudy training based on PRT techniques, wherever possible.
Within the academic and government sectors, there was large variation in the length of time used to prepare monkeys for chair restraint equipment before research procedures began. Delays with initial chair training are undesirable, because they delay the collection of data and delivery of the science within the period of grant funding. Experience has shown that macaques can be trained for cooperation with chair restraint by using predominantly PRT techniques relatively quickly when a closed chair is used.4 Although switching chair designs can be expensive, the decrease in personnel time needed to prepare animals for restraint procedures and the accelerated pace of the science likely will more than recoup the expense of purchasing new chairs. 2ff7e9595c
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