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> Did we really need to torture these creatures for decades to understand the importance of care giving?

Yes, we did. Look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitalism people didn't even understand how much humans need care, never mind animals. The people placing these babies into care did so with the best intentions, but insufficient knowledge.

Your knowledge comes from these experiments.

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> In 1945, the psychoanalyst René Spitz published an article in which he explained how deprivation of social interactions can lead to a condition named "hospitalism" in infants. According to Spitz, young children who are cared for in institutions can suffer from severe impairment in their development because they are not provided with sufficient maternal care.

We figured this out without needing to torture monkeys. Apparently, though, this was not sufficient for Harlow, as he created his pit of despair almost 30 years later.

We could have done most animal experiments on humans instead but our species has long set up rules that favor the exploitation of "other" over ourselves.

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