art by Sally rumball
Beyond the Glass: A Memoir of #16162
Looking back at the two years I spent working as a primate technician, my deepest regret is a deceptively simple one: I never gave her a name. She was known only as 16162, the identification number neatly tattooed in black ink on the inside of her thigh.
Like the other 2,500 nonhuman primates housed at the facility, she was treated as a mere data point. The research community actively frowns on name-giving to discourage "special treatment" that might disrupt the data. In a research lab, compassion is viewed as a threat to efficiency.
Yet, the facility was a mass of contradictions. My coworker, who warned me against naming the monkeys, openly kept a personal favorite named Marge, a macaque who would present herself for head scratches in exchange for a single peanut. That brief interaction was the highlight of Marge’s day, standing in stark contrast to the hours of isolated, cage-crazy boredom that filled the rest of her existence. Outright physical abuse was uncommon, but the institution rewarded efficiency, not kindness. Assembly-line animal husbandry was the law of the land.
For those few technicians like myself who cared enough to try, we occasionally scrawled fleeting names on the cages, only for them to be washed away during autoclave sterilization. But for 16162, her stark, stainless steel world remained entirely anonymous. She deserved so much more.
As she languished in her cage, I tried everything I could to ease her suffering, from playing soothing ocean music to giving her cardboard tubes and cherry wood to chew on. She was incredibly clever, often banging her puzzle feeder against the side of the cage to force the treats out all at once, effectively outsmarting the device.
But my most significant connection with her was through a makeshift mirror fashioned out of a shiny piece of metal. I made sure she always had one, and she used it proficiently. I even skipped a break once to videotape her using it.
Looking at her expression, it was completely clear to me that she knew exactly who was looking back when she gazed at her own reflection. She possessed a deep, undeniable self-awareness that the lab's protocols chose to ignore.
Unfortunately, the psychological toll of confinement began to break her down. 16162 began plucking the hair from her own body as efficiently as she plucked the fleece from her grooming board.
Soon, her cage was empty; she had been moved to the clinic due to chronic, stress-related diarrhea and severe anorexia. The clinic itself was a cruel environment, separating sick, highly stressed animals from a busy hallway by a large glass window, putting them on constant display for passing lab workers.
When I checked on her, 16162 was crouching on a tiny metal perch, too sick for treats. She spent her final two months fading away. She would crouch in the corner, holding her hands over her head as if trying to hide from the world.
When we asked if she could be provided with pain relief, the clinic veterinarian casually dismissed her, claiming she was "just feeling sorry for herself," while another technician joked about looking up a computer code for "pouting." They ran a minimally invasive endoscopy under sedation, taking mucosal biopsies that revealed no medical explanations. Her illness wasn't a pathogen; it was the psychological trauma of the lab itself.
Rhesus macaques are resilient, often called a "weed" species because they can survive years of duress. But the close confinement, isolation, lack of community, and the terror of daily cage hosing take a devastating toll. Exactly one week after her condition was deemed chronic, 16162 was put on the schedule to be killed by necropsy. In animal labs, a necropsy is performed while the animal is still alive but groggy from sedatives, allowing technicians to cut out internal organs while they are still infused with blood. They systematically harvested her organs with casual nonchalance, drawing blood directly from a major artery near her exposed heart until it finally stopped beating.
After nine years of life filled with boredom and depression, too sick to get pregnant or be used in a study, she was unceremoniously parted out.
During her final days in the clinic, we gave her back her mirror, but she never looked into it again. The last spark of life had gone out of her long before they killed her. My final memory of 16162 is her crouching in the back of her cage with dark, sunken eyes, a few clumps of disheveled fur forming a halo around her bald head. I wasn’t sad when she died; for a monkey in a research lab, life is far worse than death.
As taxpayers, we all fund this exploitation, yet the public is kept completely in the dark. In writing her story, I realize that I wasn't ever able to love her in a way that was meaningful to her. 16162 was just one of tens of thousands of monkeys, and millions of other sentient beings, sacrificed yearly in the name of science. The day cannot come quickly enough when we abolish animal testing, but until then, I will always carry the quiet regret that I failed to give her the smallest dignity of a name.
Artist Statement
sally rumball
Portraits are immensely personal and respectfully commemorative. I aspire to immerse myself in the process, almost feeling skin and hair as I work. Reading this story, I learnt more about 16162's appearance than the technician who wrote it. Without photographs or personal knowledge of the individuals in the essay, I worked from instinct and intuition. I believed both souls deserved to be portrayed, equally, hence my choice to split my composition vertically through the centre of their faces. And yet, in sharing the page, I brought them together, as one portrait, 2 primates bonded in a mission.
I found painting the Macaque's features easier than the human's, given the starting point of a species that I take great joy in painting regularly. I had no idea what the human looked like, or if female or male. Monkeys' physical attributes rely on species uniformity, vs. humans which are influenced by genetic mixing, so as much as I want to believe each monkey to be a unique individual, there are a limited number of appearance permutations.
In using ink as a medium, time is an active ingredient. I prefer to work loosely, wetting the paper and applying pigment liberally, allowing it to move and settle organically. Later, I fine-tune some areas with more detail - Especially the eyes, which I believe are a visual voice of the portrait subject.
At the first mention of 16162's number and lack of name, I was crying. Picturing the frail Macaque, her patchy pink limbs, her eyes questioning her carer, looking for reprieve... maybe today?
Thank you to Justify, the Lab Technician for sharing your painful story, and 16162 for the honour of painting you. You are free now dear 16162. We acknowledge your existence and confirm your identity.
When I first saw Sally Rumball’s beautifully expressive art I burst into tears. It’s so true that we humans are just another species of social primate and when we torture them in labs we also torment ourselves. Thank you Sally for investing your time and talent to bring awareness to all the primates locked away in labs.
AUTHOR OF Beyond the glass: a memoir of #16162