For all but two months of the year refreshing trade winds air-condition a primate laboratory 90 m above sea level on the windward side of the remote West Indian island of St Kitts. There, nestled among palm trees and fields of 8-foot sugar cane is a converted "great house" where researchers are attempting to unravel some of the complexities of human behavior and the origins of man by studying monkeys in a seminatural habitat.
The project is being conducted by the private Behavioral Sciences Foundation under the direction of Frank R. Ervin, MD, now professor of psychiatry at the Allan Memorial Institute, McGill University, Montreal.
Bringing investigators to the difficult-to-find island inhabited by the monkeys has an advantage over primate studies that have been conducted on caged animals far removed from their native homes, noted the tall, bearded Ervin during a recent interview with JAMA MEDICAL NEWS. The laboratory was