The word from Russia is that the country wants to send monkeys to the Red Planet by 2017. But waving the red flag on such a plan are the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). A few months ago, it was reported that researchers from the Russian Academy of Science are busy training four macaque monkeys to make a long-distance trek to the Red Planet. Researcher Inessa Kozlovskaya is the leader of the team responsible for teaching the monkeys at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Educating the animals includes joystick training and tapping into the cognitive thinking and learning skills of the animals. [Animals in Space: A Photo Menagerie] While the sojourn to Mars of the monkeys would take six-months, it wasn't immediately clear whether there's any provision to return the animals back to Earth. Misguided mission "PETA has written to Igor Komarov, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, calling on him to cancel the misguided mission