Infant Monkeys Died in Accidental Poisoning at UC Davis Lab

The seven primates came into contact with a dye that was used on their mothers, documents reveal.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Seven baby monkeys in a lab at the University of California, Davis, died after being accidentally poisoned by a dye used in research, The Guardian reported last weekend (June 16). The deaths, which occurred after the monkeys’ mothers were marked for identification with Nyanzol-D that was subsequently transferred to their infants, represent the latest in a string of ethical scandals for the university’s primate research labs.

Researchers discovered two of the macaques with dye in their mouths, exhibiting “generalized weakness and respiratory distress [and] severe edema and swelling of the larynx and tongue,” according to documents seen by The Guardian that were sent last year by UC Davis to federal authorities. The five others, which also showed some amount of dye on their skin or in their mouths, were “either found dead or euthanized upon arrival at the hospital.”

A spokesman for the university tells the ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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