Skip to main content

International 3Rs Prize now open for applications. £30k prize (£2k personal award) for outstanding science with demonstrable 3Rs impacts.

NC3Rs | 20 Years: Pioneering Better Science
Office-led project

Chair restraint training of non-human primates

At a glance

Completed
Current contacts

R

  • Refinement
""

Overview

Specifically-designed restraint chairs are commonly used in research studies that require non-human primates to ‘sit’ in place for sustained periods of time (e.g. behavioural neuroscience and drug infusion studies). Despite widespread use of restraint chairs, there is little published information about the methods used to train monkeys to accept this form of restraint, which can be a stressful procedure for these animals.

Working with the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, we led an international survey to document current practice and to identify opportunities for refinement. The work is published in Comparative Medicine.

The survey identified large variation in the types of chair used, the methods of transferring the monkey from the home environment into the chair, the time allowed to prepare the animals for chair restraint equipment before research procedures begin, and the roles of the personnel involved.

We make several recommendations for refining the use of chair restraint, such as greater discussion of training procedures between laboratories, more pre-study training based on positive reinforcement techniques, use of standard operating procedures to increase consistency in animal training and monitoring, and seeking advice from specialist training consultants.

Ensuring that the chair restraint process is as fully refined as possible will reduce any stress and discomfort to a minimum, facilitating good performance from the monkey and good scientific data.

Workshop funding

To support the research community to refine restraint training of non-human primates we have co-sponsored, over four consecutive years, an 8-hour training workshop on ‘Teaching monkeys to cooperate with restraint: using positive reinforcement training and temperament testing methods’, held at the AALAS National Meeting in the USA.

Working group membership

Name Institution
Dr Mark Prescott NC3Rs
Dr Jennifer McMillan Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Dr Mollie Bloomsmith Yerkes National Primate Research Center

Publications

  1. McMillan J, Bloomsmith MA, Prescott MJ (2017) An international survey of approaches to chair restraint of nonhuman primates. Comparative Medicine 67(5):442-451.

3Rs Impacts