Gender differences in reactivity of adult squirrel monkeys to short-term environmental challenges.

Evidence is presented to show that individual adult squirrel monkeys show gender-specific reactivity profiles to threatening stimuli under laboratory conditions, and that a putative anxiogenic drug, benactyzine hydrochloride, enhances the vocal response to threatening stimuli, but otherwise preserves the relative importance of the stimuli to both males and females. These data support the conclusion that screening of putative anxiolytic drugs in a primate model can be accomplished using efficient, ethologically based testing procedures in the laboratory.