Trump might shut down UW’s Primate Research Center. Should he? Scott Greenstone October 06, 2025 / 6:03 am

The mice cages tend to be quiet. On a recent walk through the animal labs at the University of Washington in Seattle, the ferrets were listening to ocean and bird sounds.

But the monkeys at the Washington National Primate Center were listening to Bobby Brown’s “Roni.”

“Classical music and talk radio, they seem to really like,” said Dr. Melissa Berg, a veterinarian walking between cages. “They seem to really like Disney movies and Animal Planet and anything that has other animals that they can watch.”

Berg and the staff try lots of activities to enrich the lives of these caged pigtailed macaques: freezing their food into astro-turf so they can sort of forage, making them cli

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