Content warning: this post contains descriptions of animal abuse.
Hey, remember Darwin, aka the Ikea Monkey?
Of course you do. He became an instant meme and media sensation, with reporters and viewers emphasizing how cute and funny it was how a monkey could be wandering around a Canadian Ikea in that outfit.
What did not become a media sensation was the decidedly less cute and funny account on how Darwin actually got to Ikea, and what happened afterwards.
In the wild, Darwin, a Japanese snow macaque, would’ve been living on his mother’s back for at least a year, nursing and foraging for food, relaxing in hot springs, and doing what monkeys do in the wild with his troop. Instead, Darwin was born (or smuggled) into the exotic pet trade in Canada and forcibly removed from his real mother to be given to a human owner, where he was kept on a harness and would wear diapers and children’s clothes.
His owner, an exotic animal enthusiast, bought Darwin because she felt she needed to be a mother again (she already has two sons, both of whom were still children when she got him) and took him with her everywhere. She insisted that she loved Darwin and Darwin loved her, but there is evidence that might not have always been the case. Darwin would frequently bite his owner and her son, especially during diaper changes, which at one point led to the owner leaving him in a soiled diaper for 36 hours. She would also threaten Darwin with a wooden spoon and smack him on the nose to discipline him. This isn’t slander by haters; she admitted to this in e-mails to a primate trainer. She would also admit that she felt unfit to care for Darwin and was willing to give him up. Yet despite the evidence glaring at her in the face that Darwin was not going to make a suitable pet, she embarked on a lengthy legal battle to get him back. She would go on weepy tirades on how much she bonded with the monkey, how she was supposedly tricked into giving him away, how he was really a domesticated animal and her son because he wore diapers, and how the sanctuary that took him in was evil for keeping him in a “prison” away from her. Apparently apartment buildings make better living spaces for wild animals than outdoor enclosures, and human owners care for them better than their real mothers. In the end, she didn’t get Darwin back, but instead of learning from the experience, she moved to the countryside and bought herself new monkeys (with allegations that she has a whooping 60 primates in her care now) to continue dressing up and treating like children.
Darwin’s tale is all too common for the thousands of primates kept as pets around the world. The media depicts monkeys as cute, friendly, funny and harmless animals. Chimps are permanently small and pink-faced, and capuchins are cheeky little devils. You’ve probably seen at least one movie or show where someone kept a primate as a pet or funny animal companion. What the media does not tell you is that primates can become very strong, hierarchical, carry diseases deadly to humans, and attack perceived threats or people they don’t like. That cute little chimp grows up to be bigger, less cute looking, pure muscle, and will literally rip your face off if you get on their bad side. (Yes, this has actually happened.) Yet some people think that primates would make excellent family pets and fuel the exotic animal trade to get them.
If a primate is taken from the wild, its entire family will likely be killed off since they will fight to the death to save it from the poacher. If the primate is captive bred, it will be removed from its mother days or even hours after birth in the hopes that it will bond better with its human “parent”. Puppies don’t get weaned off their mothers and sold as pets until they’re several months old, yet it’s considered acceptable to do this to an animal that needs to be with its biological mother for at least a full year. The people who buy the primates can do so for a variety of reasons, but the most common ones seem to be 1) for status symbols, 2) for surrogate children/permanent babies, or 3) for ad revenue (or a combination of all three).
The first reason is obvious. Anyone can have a dog or a cat. But a monkey or a chimp? That shows you’re rich and unique. You become the talk of the town, people make news stories and documentaries about you, you’re different from everyone else. Who cares about the monkey’s wants or needs.
The second reason is a huge phenomenon in the United States; a lot of people, especially older women, get monkeys to be their child that supposedly won’t grow up. Docile and dependent as babies, these monkeys are put in diapers and often made to wear people clothes and sometimes fed people food (which can give them diabetes). They’re great because they’re the perfect child that won’t talk back, won’t go away to college, won’t go to school or camp during the day, and won’t get into adolescent trouble. Who cares if you already have real children. Who cares if the monkey obsessively rocks with its stuffy because it got separated from its real mother too soon. It’s something that will be totally dependent on you for a long time…at least until it hits sexual maturity.
And third is unspoken, but it is apparent. A lot of people who get these monkeys can create a living off them through sweet YouTube ad revenue. They document their day to day lives with their monkey, feeding into the idea that monkeys make good pets, and viewers lap up these cute videos and follow them on social media. Some of them may be inspired to get their own monkey.
But the problem in all these situations is that the monkeys have difficult lives, and often don’t stay with their owners long. All primates get aggressive when they reach sexual maturity (which is within a few years) and start lashing out and biting. Bad behavior can continue afterwards if it tries to assert its dominance in the family. To try to mitigate these behaviors, owners will fix and neuter their monkey…and pull out their teeth and cut off their fingernails to make it less dangerous. And remember, a lot of owners will insist that their monkey is either like a dog or like a child, and yet we wouldn’t do that to either of them when they misbehave.
Sometimes the primate will be abused so it acts a certain way. In some areas with different cultural attitudes towards primates and where animal cruelty laws are less strict, there are certain owners who will force their monkey to walk upright by literally tying its hands behind its back. They are then often made to wear restrictive and gaudy clothing to model (which usually involves shaving the monkey) and upload videos of them looking and behaving ‘humanlike’ (re: unnaturally) for ad revenue and/or attention.
But no matter which part of the world the owner is from, they will post videos where the monkey is visibly distressed, making “fear grimaces” (which is often mistaken for a grin) and crying out. Some may simply be misinformed on how to properly care for a monkey and misread these behaviours as ‘cute’; others might actually enjoy inflicting pain on the primate and see it solely as a living plaything.
But ultimately, the primate will become too much for the owner to handle. Some owners do the right thing by releasing it to a reputable sanctuary, but many others end up keeping their primate in squalor and small cages, or resell it. Others still will abandon the monkey when it gets less cute and docile or even euthanize it. They may learn their lesson, or they will continue the vicious cycle and get a new baby.
Not so cute now, eh? Darwin is probably one of the lucky ones: he got saved from the cycle very early on. He was left alone in his owner’s car in the middle of winter, during a busy Ikea parking lot, and was somehow able to escape (good thing he didn’t freeze to death or get stolen by a carjacker). But most people stopped listening to his story after his trip to the store and likely won’t be aware of how he is part of a very cruel trade that keeps going on, and how movie and YouTube portrayals of monkeys as suitable pets often perpetuate it.
How’s Darwin now? He’s currently living in Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Ontario, Canada, which I had the pleasure of visiting recently. Unfortunately his experience before arriving might have traumatized him, since he was very shy and didn’t want to come out to see the visitors (I could only catch a few glimpses of him). But he’s doing well all things considered; he’s gotten very big and strong (apparently strong enough to bend rebar), loves to play, and has found a father figure in Pierre, the handsome olive baboon resident.
The sanctuary relies on donations to survive so I strongly suggest you give them your support for their fundraising campaign. Story Book Farm is the only monkey sanctuary in Canada (the other primate sanctuary in Montreal only houses chimps) so they need it in case more primates in Canada become a victim of this trade. If you want to find out how Darwin is doing now, you can visit his Facebook page. For more information on the primate trade, watch the documentary My Child is a Monkey by Barcroft TV.
Remember, wild animals, including primates, will forever be wild. You cannot take that out of them, no matter how hard you insist the wild is too dangerous, or try to train and tame them like a dog, or treat them like your child. If you really want a primate, think about if it’s really so that they can live a happier life away from its troop and natural habitat, or just so you can feel better about yourself.
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