Atlanta, Georgia (affiliated with Emory University)

Approximate number of chimpanzees: 98

Private facility that receives federal funding for chimpanzee research; part of the National Primate Research Center system

The facilities of Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Yerkes) include the main station on 25-acres of the Emory University campus and a nearby 117-acre field station specializing in behavioral studies of primate social groups. The main station holds around 1,150 nonhuman primates and “houses the center’s biomedical laboratories, neuroscience facility and the Emory Vaccine Center.” Located in Lawrenceville, Georgia, the field station “serves as a breeding facility for the entire center” and houses approximately 2,250 primates. (1)

In addition to chimpanzees, Yerkes houses rhesus macaques, pigtail macaques, cynomolgus monkeys, sooty mangabeys, squirrel monkeys, and capuchins. (2)

History

Yerkes is named for psychobiologist Dr. Robert M. Yerkes, who studied chimpanzees and other apes in the 1920s. His studies led to the opening of the first laboratory - Yale Laboratories for Primate Biology - in the U.S. for the study of nonhuman primates in 1930 in Orange Park, Florida. Yerkes was originally funded in the 1920s by Yale University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation. (3)

When Dr. Yerkes retired in 1941, Yale University renamed the laboratory the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology. Dr. Yerkes died in 1956, at which time Yale decided that “the geographical separation of the university and the Orange Park labs was not conducive to…research and education programs for Yale faculty and students.” (4) That same year, Emory University assumed “ownership of the lab, and by 1965 Emory had transferred the facility to its campus in Atlanta, Georgia, using NIH funding. (5)

A 1974 documentary entitled PRIMATE by famed filmmaker Frederick Wiseman was filmed at Yerkes. NEAVS/Project R&R President, Dr. Theo Capaldo has said that: “PRIMATE was almost certainly the first and last time a camera was so freely admitted to a research lab anywhere in the U.S. In Wiseman’s film, the institution of animal research was laid bare: the humdrum mentality of the attendants, the attitude of the vivisectors, the day to day lives of the animals, and, of course, the rhetoric necessary to try to convince not just us but perhaps even themselves that their ‘work’ is necessary and beneficial.”

In addition, Wiseman’s PRIMATE documentary shows researchers observing and manipulating the sexual behavior of chimpanzees and other primates. Wiseman filmed the documentary during a period in which Yerkes’ primary focus was on breeding. Other great apes – gorillas and orangutans – were also part of those years of reproductive research. When the documentary appeared on public television, audiences were outraged. Researchers found these reactions incredulous.

Historically, maternal separation/deprivation experiments on chimpanzees took place at Yerkes. (6)

Read more about Dr. Yerkes and Yerkes’ history:

• Chimpanzee Research: The Beginnings
• “Aping Science, A Critical Analysis of Research at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center (1995)” (Americans for Medical Advancement)

Chimpanzee Use

According to Yerkes’ website, “Chimpanzees make valuable contributions to research involving aging, brain imaging, genetic and cognitive studies, social intelligence and evolution.” (7)

To study evolution, the Living Links center was established in 1997. “Chimpanzee research at the Living Links Center is conducted at the Yerkes Field Station, which is home to two socially housed chimpanzee groups [of 12.]” The mission of the center is “to study human evolution by investigating our close genetic, anatomical, cognitive, and behavioral similarities with great apes.” (8)

On August 21, 2005, an experiment using chimpanzees at Yerkes confirmed that “cultural transmission and conformity” exists in chimpanzee communities. This experiment was conducted despite the fact that its finding has been known and not questioned since the extensive 30+ years of field work with free-living chimpanzees in Africa by Dr. Jane Goodall. The Yerkes study revealed that chimpanzees “share the same conformist tendencies” as humans and have a “natural motivation to copy their peers well into adulthood.” (9)

Research Profile *

Principal Research Programs:

• Microbiology and Immunology
• Neuroscience
• Visual Science/Sensory-Motor Systems
• Psychobiology

Current research on primates in microbiology and immunology “focuses on vaccines and treatments for HIV and AIDS, malaria, hepatitis, smallpox and anthrax.” Yerkes believes that, “By using rodents and nonhuman primates to study the progression of disease and to test new treatments, Yerkes scientists provide the basic biomedical research that eventually will result in novel strategies for treatment and prevention of infectious diseases in humans.” (10)

Financials

Yerkes, like the other labs profiled, receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). For grant P51RR000165, “Support of Yerkes National Primate Research Center,” Emory University received over $11 million for 2008. Since 1998, Emory has received almost $92 million for this grant alone. (11) All grants are paid to Emory University rather than to Yerkes itself.

Address

Sources

(1) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/resources

(2) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/primateshttp://www.yerkes.emory.edu/index/primates

(3) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/history

(4) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/historyhttp://www.yerkes.emory.edu/index/history

(5) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/frequently-asked-questionshttp://www.yerkes.emory.edu/index/history

(6) Stephens, M.L. 1986: “Maternal Deprivation Experiments in Psychology: A Critique of the Animal Models,” A Report prepared for the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, pp. 27-28.

(7) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/primates

(8) http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/chimpanzees.html

(9) www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/euhs-cnn081905.php

(10) http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/microbiology-and-immunology 
 
(11) http://taggs.hhs.gov/

Last updated: February 2009

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