YOUR LEGACY FOR ANIMALS
Augustus (pictured here) was one of the 17 macaque “Silver Spring monkeys,” most of whom were taken from their jungle homes in the late 1970s and purchased for $200 each by animal experimenter Edward Taub for testing purposes. After PETA exposed the extreme cruelty and neglect that were being inflicted on Augustus and the others in Taub’s lab at the Institute for Behavioral Research laboratory, the police raided it and Taub became the first experimenter to be convicted of cruelty to animals.
During the legal battle that went on for years, PETA succeeded in getting five of the monkeys transferred to indoor/outdoor enclosures at the San Diego Zoo, where they could live together and were never put on display. However, despite the custody battles, most of the monkeys were finally killed by experimenters, including Augustus, who died at the Delta Regional Primate Research Center in July 1990.