Marshmallows Are Their Favorite – Undercover at a Primate Lab is an extremely thought-provoking and compelling book written by award-winning undercover investigator Lindsay Oliver. It follows her four-month covert investigation inside a large US primate breeding and testing facility. This remarkable record of the author’s time as a laboratory animal technician exposes the reality of life for those within the facility – both the humans and the animals. Throughout the investigation we are allowed an opportunity to meet the monkeys and given a rare glimpse into the too-often forgotten world of primate testing in which society has placed them.
About the Author. Lindsay Oliver
is the founder of Justify, an organisation that provides a safe place for current and former laboratory workers to share their experiences and help workers move away from animal-based models to human-relevant science. Transitioning from frontline fieldwork to executive leadership, Lindsay has led multi-million-dollar organisations and she is currently the Executive Director of Animals International US.
My heart raced from the very first pages – will she be discovered with her hidden camera as she is shown through the windowless hallways and rooms with fluorescent lights? The reader senses the odour, the sounds of screams, the howling and the faces peering out from their cages. The story takes us on a glimpse into the monotonous daily lives of these monkeys, their procedures, their confinement, their loneliness and unnatural environment.
This brave and compelling account is in no uncertain terms, heartbreaking. I want to tell myself it is just a novel, a work of fiction, but I draw myself back to the reality that it is true and happening now in primate centres around the world.
We meet macaques named Omelet, Bo, Scarlet, Mango, Lucy, Tiggs, Ralph and many others – monkeys named by the technicians despite the facility wanting staff to refer to animals as identification numbers only. We also get to discover their distinct personalities. Throughout the book, the reader can vicariously spend time with them; feel their confinement and fear; and sense the rows of cages – some being shaken with distress or others silently harbouring a cowering monkey. We become aware of the procedures such as capture, electroejaculation, blood tests, restraint chairs and neck braces, implanted devices and the sad fate of pregnant monkeys. The research protocols involving the macaques were not generally disclosed to the technicians. However, we learn that some were used in alcohol, stroke and weight-loss studies.
The reader will also feel empathy for some of the workers, the animal technicians themselves, some of whom who took the job with the intention to care for animals.
The monkeys have much to thank Lindsay for, for she has been able to give them a voice and a place in our hearts. She places us there in the confines of the facility with her and helps us to understand their lives. She has made their lives visible.
This book gives the unique opportunity for the reader to go undercover. It will tear at your heart strings. It will make you look in the mirror and question our society’s treatment of animals in laboratories. It might even make you speak out loud and fearlessly about the treatment of animals in research and help pave a way forward. The author took great risks to witness the animals’ lives and to write about them, so we too should not be afraid to read it.
Review by Robyn Kirby, Primate Campaign Consultant for Animal-Free Science Advocacy
In Australia order from Booktopia or Amazon.
To find out more about primate experiments in Australia please visit AFSA’s Ban Primate Experiments page.