Scratch Monkey Story 11 january 2004 This morning, I spoke for an hour with Laura Creighton, who wrote the device driver for the equipment between the monkeys and the computer. This incident happened at the University of Toronto in late November of 1979 or 1980. The zoology department had used digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters in a large number of experiments, including attempting to synthesize pheromones to reduce breeding of beetles that fed on tobacco crops, some rat neurological experiments, …showed first 75 words of 607 total…

…showed last 75 words of 607 total…use as my motto: You should not conduct tests while valuable monkeys are connected, so "Always mount a scratch monkey." Laura Creighton points out that although this is told as a gruesomely amusing story, three monkeys did lose their lives, and there are lessons to be learned in treatment of animals and risk management. Particularly, the sign on the disk drive should have explained why the drive should never have been enabled for write access.