Primate Housing : Karl Ireland
Karl Ireland with Miga his capuchin :
(Check out his site at http://web2.airmail.net/geets/)"Her cage is VERY HEAVY DUTY and is based around a 6' x 10' dog kennel kit purchased at Home Depot. This kennel kit is 6' high, (now it is almost 7' high), and includes a full size walk in door.
An IMMENSE amount of work went into this basic kennel to convert it from a floppy and roofless dog kennel into an extremely sturdy and secure primate habitat. Many custom needed to be designed from the ground up including the specialized door locking system (loosely based on a bank vault mechanism).
Where each of the original single vertical 6' tubes are positioned, an additional 6' tube is added and mounted close enough to leave only a 2" gap between them. I might mention that each of the tube pairs are positioned exactly so they straddle, (one on each side), the slip-joints that connect all the horizontal tubes together that form the 2 identical 6' x 10' cage base and the 6' x 10' cage top.
The included single sheet of chain link fencing was not adequate for my new habitat's design, so I separated and sized it into about 16 smaller pieces. I then used steel stretcher rods as a perimeter frame for each pre-sized pieces of chain link fence to be attached to while being stretched very tight both horizontally and vertically.
Next each of the framed chain link fence panels are positioned and mounted in the large open spaces that are separated by all the 6' vertical tube pairs. This double tube arraignment allows the cage to be disassembled into 6 "fully assembled modules". The roof section is also constructed in the same fashion and can be detached as 2 identical panels each measuring 6' x 5' in size.
The most tiring and time consuming chore involves mounting each of the small cut off pieces of chain link to the stretcher rod frames. The reason is that it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that as each solid wire is cut, bent and attached to the rods that ALL WIRE ENDS AND SHARP EDGES MUST BE FORMED & BLUNTED & POSITIONED SO THAT THE MONK IS UNABLE TO COME IN CONTACT WITH ANY THING SHARP, JAGGED, POINTED OR QUESTIONABLE to eliminate the chance of being cut or worse, blinded while he is playing, swinging etc. in his enclosure. Monks play rough and fast so nothing dangerous should be available to him that might possibly cause injury if contact is made during his activities inside the enclosure. Each wire end, bolt head, nut etc. is different and usually requires a different procedure as to mounting position, bending or forming during the cages design & construction. I have spent countless hours inside the cage using my hands to contact every surface, bolt, nut etc. from many different angled looking for anything that feels sharp or pointed or otherwise might make my hand feel any discomfort whatsoever. I had to think like a monkey at play, and also think like a human being to try with all my ability to find something that even under the most unusual circumstances might cause an injury to him.
So in a nutshell the whole cage can be broken down into just (6) wall sections, (1) door section, and (2) roof sections, all by removing only (18) 1/4-20 bolts! The cage could, for example, be taken to a quarter car wash for cleaning, or a friend or monkey sitters location to be cared for while keeping the monk in his own familiar home.
The cage base's steel perimeter tubing is actually raised an additional 3" above the cement by 6 small support tubes. This additional feature keeps the tubing off the cement so any accumulated dirt & debris will not collect at and under the tube where it would be difficult to remove. This also allows me to sweep UNDER the cake from the outside to the inside! The water hose can also be used to squirt dirt and stuff without the cage being in the way. It is like having 6 strong men lift the cage when I need to clean it. I might mention that I measured Miga's body parts including chest, shoulders, and most importantly his skull size with a dial caliper to get exact sizes. These measurements allow me to set the length of the cage "stilts" to keep them as long as possible for ease of cleaning while not presenting either the skull or shoulders the necessary clearance for Miga to escape through. Having a cage like this is ideal because I can clean it from inside or outside all while he continues to play inside. Also a walk in cake allows the monkey dad or monkey mom plenty of room to chase and be chased or wrestle with the beast comfortably for many hours and still include enough space for any large items for you and him to play with.
I have only 1 color camera in use now, but I am going to add 2 more cameras to provide an additional view of his inside cage and another to view the tunnel system.
First I have to design a motion detector system that use infra-red motion sensors to see if Miga is in his (1) big outdoor cage, (2) smaller inside cage, or (3) the tunnel system connecting all the cages. The detector will see him in the big cage and enable camera #1 to view the big cage. If he decides to travel to the inside bathroom cage, his entry into the tunnels will trigger the tunnel motion sensor (which only views the tunnels) and thereby cause the big cage camera view to be replaced with the tunnel camera view. Once he get to the inside bathroom cage the tunnel camera view is replaced by the camera viewing the inside cage. All this will be done with 3 cameras, 3 Radio Shaft infra-red motion detectors and a homemade video switcher that will route the selected cameras video to the video capture board in my desktop DX2 486-66 computer which runs the video server. This machine automatically logs on the web at 10am. At 6pm all camera video is turned off and the server program selects a pre-recorded AVI video of my choosing which usually shows Miga and I wrestling and playing in the living room or something better with Miga.
Located at http://www.ibeco.com/monkeycam/index.html is my newest website, called Monkeycam. It has many things to check out including a live color camera that allows anyone with access to the web to see Miga in his new BIG outside cage with only about 5 seconds of delay. Also the frame rate is more enjoyable than many of the webcams that only update the image once a minute or worse. The average connection done using a 28.8 modem can show a new frame between 1fps (best) and at worse a new frame every 5 seconds.
So come and watch Miga play and swing! "
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