Key Points
The 43 rhesus macaque monkeys that escaped a South Carolina medical lab this week are among the most studied animals on the planet...
Every large research university in the United States probably has some rhesus macaques hidden somewhere in the basement of its medical school, according to the 2007 book, Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World.".
The U.S. Army and NASA have rhesus macaques too, wrote the book's author, Dario Maestripieri, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago, and for years they trained them to play computer video games to see whether the monkeys could learn to pilot planes and launch missiles..
The other reason is because rhesus macaques, as primates go, are a pretty hardy species, said Eve Cooper, the eLife research paper's lead author and a biology professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder..
For example, a rhesus monkey named Miss Sam was launched in 1960 in a Mercury capsule that attained a velocity of 1,800 mph (1,900 kph) and an altitude of 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) . She was retrieved in overall good condition.. She was also returned to her training colony until her death on an unknown date, NASA wrote...
