Chimpanzees are human's closest living relatives. ©iStock.com

More than 1,000 chimpanzees—some who were captured from the wild, used by the entertainment industry and kept as pets—currently live in nine biomedical research and testing laboratories around the United States.

Despite extensive knowledge of their rich social and emotional lives and their ineffectiveness as models for human diseases like HIV, chimpanzees continue to be subjected to painful and invasive experiments—some for more than 40 years now. However, at any given time, the vast majority of chimpanzees in laboratories are not being used, while their care and maintenance is spending taxpayer dollars.

It’s time to end the wasteful and poor treatment of our closest living and endangered relatives.  

The HSUS seeks to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive biomedical research and testing and to retire those chimpanzees  currently in laboratories to permanent and appropriate sanctuaries by: 

• influencing policymakers
• gaining support from the public
• growing support among members of the scientific community
• scientifically challenging the arguments advocating harmful chimpanzee research
• preventing breeding of additional chimpanzees into the research system

Where Chimps Are Used for Research and Where They Are Retired to Sanctuary

Click on the image above to use our interactive research/sanctuary map.

Updated July 16, 2009