Willey, S. 2014. Nonhuman primate enrichment room planning, design, and use. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 539 (Abstract #PS52).

Princeton University continually makes efforts to improve and enhance the quality of life of our NHPs used in research. A part of this effort is to continue to improve our environmental enrichment program, promoting the expression of species-typical behaviors. Having had the privilege to be part of a move to a new facility, we were able to facility new innovative techniques in building an European- style NHP enrichment room and face this balancing act first hand. The new facility was built specifically as a vivarium to house primates, rodents, and aquatics. Due to this, we were able to create an enrichment room for the primates that would allow natural sunlight, species-specific behaviors, and increase the likelihood of pair housing older, singly housed macaques. Some of the issues we faced were cleaning schedules, room maintenance, scheduling the use of enrichment rooms, regression of learned behaviors, staff training inconsistencies, and enrichment room item conflicts. Each monkey had been target trained prior to the move so that when they were introduced to the enrichment room they would return to their home cage via target. If the target training was learned and the animal responded to the target within a latency of 1 s, they were “Okayed” to be released into the enrichment room. A few unexpected snags were the permanent and nonpermanent structures within the enrichment room. With monkeys being monkeys, they found weaknesses within the room we were not aware of, such as the drain covers and paint chips. Also, things like the play sets we had placed in the rooms held water for hours after cleaning, which posed conflicts with the research staff that had animals on water restriction. With each obstacle faced, we were able to work through it or find a solution and we continue to work for and test novel, interactive enrichment items in this space that are conducive with research needs.