Japanese macaque with one macaque recorded living in central Tokyo for several months. The Japanese macaque (snow monkey) has featured prominently in the religion, folklore, and art of Japan, as well as in proverbs and idiomatic expressions in the Japanese language. In Shinto belief, mythical beasts known as "raijū" sometimes appeared as monkeys and kept Raijin, the god of lightning, company. The "three wise monkeys", which warn people to "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil", are carved in relief over the door of the famous Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō. The Japanese macaque is a feature of several fairy
Rhesus macaque significance because the macaque is used as an experimental model of the human immune system. In humans, the preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma (PRAME) gene family is expanded. It is actively expressed in cancers, but normally is testis-specific, possibly involved in spermatogenesis. The PRAME family has 26 members on human chromosome 1. In the macaque, it has eight, and has been very simple and stable for millions of years. The PRAME family arose in translocations in the common mouse-primate ancestor 85 million years ago, and is expanded on mouse chromosome 4. DNA microarrays are used in macaque research. For example,