Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Unpublished photo by LIFE’s Ralph Crane, Holloman Air Force Base, 1961. “The training of Ham and other astrochimps,” wrote LIFE, “was a scaled-down version of the human astronauts’. After curing them of jungle diseases and parasites, a special corps of veterinarians … kept track of their skeletal development by periodic X-ray exams, and gave them regular heart, muscle, and ear-nose-and-throat check-ups.”
