抄録
In 2004, we conducted a census at the Awajishima Monkey Center (AMC), individually identifying 199 monkeys, 34 of whom (17.1%) had congenital limb malformations. Including new data from birth records for the last 10 years, since 1969, 17.0% of AMC infants (180 of 1061) were born with limb malformations in the free-ranging group. We examined the relationships among severity of physical impairment, age and sex. We created an index that ranks individuals on a scale of zero to one based on number of affected and absent limbs and digits. The severity of CLMs varied greatly (index range = 0.10 to 0.85, mean = 0.39), but the mean was not significantly different among age-sex classes (Student T-test, p>0.05). We then compared the ages of disabled monkeys with those of nondisabled monkeys in the Arashiyama West group to assess how well disabled animals were surviving with limb malformations relative to nondisabled monkeys. When we compared the proportion of disabled monkeys older than 2 years who survived from each year of age to the time of the census to similar data from the Arashiyama West group of Japanese macaques, disabled monkeys aged 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 did not survive as well as the nondisabled control (Monte Carlo Simulation with 95% confidence levels), suggesting a cost in longevity to living in a free-ranging environment with limb malformations. However, many disabled individuals do survive to adulthood and females, at least, are often able to reproduce and raise offspring.
