Primal Fear: Can Monkeys Help Unlock the Secrets of Trauma? - The New York Times 🔗 🐒 🧠

Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s “monkey island.” The surviving primates could help scientists learn about the psychological response to traumatizing events.

Animals lack the complex layers of culture and politics and economics that make human societies, and human individuals, so infinitely varied. While our diversity is dazzling, it can be, for a scientist, blinding. The relative simplicity and uniformity of monkeys, combined with their close kinship to us, arguably makes them better proxies for interrogating human nature.