Survival, growth, health, and reproduction following nursery rearing compared with mother rearing in pigtailed monkeys (Macaca nemestrina).

Nursery-reared primates do not experience psychological "maternal bonding" or immunological benefits of breast milk, so they are expected to be inferior to mother-raised monkeys in growth, health, survival, reproduction, and maternal abilities. Studies of nursery-reared monkeys support aspects of this prediction for infants deprived of social contact or raised in pairs. We present colony record data on 1,187 mother and 506 nursery-raised monkeys, 2-10 yr of age, living in mixed groups. We found no group differences in survival, growth, clinical treatments for disease or bite wounds, or pregnancy outcome and neonatal deaths. Nursery males given breeding opportunities produced an average of 24 offspring. In addition to 24-hr personnel present on every day of the year, we believe that three of our procedures account for differences between our results and other reports. Our infants received 1) intensive human handling, 2) daily social interaction in a playroom, and 3) success and failure experience during learning and cognitive testing. We do not advocate rearing primates without mothers, but we conclude that these procedures are sufficient for producing physical health and adaptive juvenile and adult social skills in nursery-raised monkeys. Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.