March 30, 2015

"This video makes me nervous. The only reason that you can be sure that the monkey doesn't just snap a puppy's neck for the hell of it..."

"... is because it's been widely shared as a 'cute' video. The owner had no way of knowing it wouldn't."

That prompts somebody else share his "monkey story":
When I was vacationing in Thailand about 20 years ago, I was in a busy restaurant that had a small monkey chained to a perch in the corner. I felt sorry for it and went over to give it some attention. I fed it a treat of some sort from my table and allowed it to perch on my shoulder. Then it shoved its fingers into my eye sockets, driving my lids deep into the space between my eyeballs and eyebrows. It wrapped it's legs around my neck and started humping the back of my head, coming before I was able to tear it off.

I came to realize that having a monkey for a pet would be as much fun as taking care of an incontinent, criminally insane person.

53 comments:

madAsHell said...

My wife, and daughter took a trip to Bali. As they were walking in a park, a monkey jumped on my adult daughter's head.

My wife?? She took a step back, and got it all on film.

Fen said...

Ah yes, I've seen this movie before:

Althouse doesn't want to talk about the Gay Nazi's forcing people to cheerlead gay weddings, under threat of losing their business and being jailed... so she floods the page till the uncomfortable truth slips off.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Went to a monkey farm when I was a kid. A spider monkey bit me, and a chimp climbed on my brother's shoulder and took a shit on his head. No love for monkeys here.

Ann Althouse said...

This is why I believe in evolution.

Birkel said...

People do not appreciate the dangers of nature, having removed themselves so effectively from it -- in their own minds. But we are not so far from a state of nature as we pretend.

Cue the "bad luck" quote Instapundit likes so well.

Expat(ish) said...

I had a monkey come into my car in india and steal my lunch off my lap. Didn't even occur to me to try to stop it - I've seen the entire Planet of the Apes series.

_XC

Steve said...

Monkeys have been known to rip faces and testicles off. I give them all a wide berth.

Sydney said...

Remember several years ago, a woman had her face ripped off by a friend's pet monkey.She had to have a face transplant.

MadisonMan said...

I walk past the Primate Lab on the UW Campus when I go down to Indie Coffee, and can smell the burning monkeys (How else do you think they really get rid of them?)

I guess that's my monkey story.

Maybe it's "just" monkey BO, not monkey incineration. You never know.

YoungHegelian said...

@expat,

I've seen the entire Planet of the Apes series.

Did the monkey have a Doomsday Bomb, too?

Lewis Wetzel said...

One of my coworkers was attacked by a caputin monkey her land lord usually kept caged up. It got out of the cage and attacked her, biting her on the hand hard enough that stitches were required to close the wound. She ran into the house and locked the doors and windows. Monkeys are smart, though, and it tore off the screens and tried to unlock the door.
She was quite frightened and moved to a new home shortly after the incident.

Beorn said...

Remember several years ago, a woman had her face ripped off by a friend's pet monkey.She had to have a face transplant.

To be fair, that was a chimpanzee, not a monkey.

Ex-prosecutor said...

Years ago, I was acquainted with a very wealthy older lawyer, who was into his 4th marriage. He wanted out, but his wife refused to agree to a divorce. So, at Christmas time, she gave him an expensive engraved watch, presumably to show her feelings for him. His Christmas present to her, in return, was a monkey, which turned out to be such a nasty, destructive creature, that it it achieved his aim - a divorce.

He said the destruction to his house and costlier alimony were worth seeing the look on her face when first presented with the screeching critter.

The Godfather said...

And then there are the people who voted for Obama because they thought he was a moderate and his election would improve race relations at home and enhance peace prospects in the Muslim world.

There are a lot of fools in the world who are governed too much by their hopes.

MadisonMan said...

Godfather: Wrong thread. We're talking monkeys here, not Obama.

jimbino said...

Even worse are all the dogs and cats that spread some 45 zoonoses.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

When I was 9 I was attacked by a monkey, a pet of one of the neighbors. It was mean and it bit me and if I hadn't kicked it really hard it might have done worse. I won't generalize but that one monkey was an evil little creature.

I'm Full of Soup said...

What are the odds that so many of your commenters have had bad experiences with monkeys!

~ Gordon Pasha said...

I was peripherally involved with the Moe the Chimpanzee case. It didn't turn out well for anyone or anything.

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/man-lost-face-05-mauling-hell-new-chimpanzee-victim-article-1.364450

Wince said...

"When a monkey nibbles on a penis, it's funny in any language."

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

1. Leave animals alone, for God's sake. They're dangerous and unpredictable.

2. Mad as Hell--Monkey Forest in Ubud? We visited as well and I was uncomfortable the whole time. You couldn't have paid me enough to take in one of those bunches of bananas to feed the monkeys.

Anonymous said...

The Simpsons had an episode about "Furious George", IIRC before the Moe the Chimp case.

Maybe one of the writers had a "bad monkey" experience.

(I've always though the episode establishing the premise that "all home contractors are liars" was to get revenge for such an experience.)

LordSomber said...

“Hey look -- that guy over there has a pet _______ (fill in name of current exotic pet species du jour).”

“Hmm. That reminds me of this story…”


http://pungeon.blogspot.com/2008/04/shock-monkey-obligatory-exotic-pet.html

buwaya said...

Well, yes.
Many of my friends had pet monkeys.
Not for long.

Wilbur said...

"You couldn't have paid me enough to take in one of those bunches of bananas to feed the monkeys. "

I expect the monkeys know they better not fuck with the regular workers - who would ensure the monkey met a quick grisly demise.

They can size up who they can mess with, I have no doubt. They are meat-eating killers in the wild.

I regard keeping a dangerous animal as a pet to be reckless to the nth degree.

William said...

This entire thread is filled with veiled references to Hillary. There's no credible reason to believe she's incontinent.

Fernandinande said...

Ann Althouse said...
This is why I believe in evolution.


Steve said...
Monkeys have been known to rip faces and testicles off.


Those were chimps, "our closest living relative", and they aren't monkeys.

Fernandinande said...

A woman was on the bus crying, so the guy next to her asked what was wrong.

She said "Everyone makes fun of my baby and says he's ugly."

The guy says, "Aw, lady, don't let 'em get to ya. And if it'll make you feel any better, here's a banana for your monkey."

Carol said...

I loathe all monkeys, chimps, apes and baboons.

Helenhightops said...

My old boss said the monkeys in the Emory lab would watch you come through the door, and then they would reach back, extract some feces, and fling them into the ceiling fan. "Think of the dirtiest, nastiest human you can think of - and that's a monkey".

Laslo Spatula said...

"Then it shoved its fingers into my eye sockets, driving my lids deep into the space between my eyeballs and eyebrows. It wrapped it's legs around my neck and started humping the back of my head, coming before I was able to tear it off."

I had the same thing happen to me, if you replace the monkey with Scarlett Johansson.

Was kinda hot.


I am Laslo.

Bob R said...

"I loathe all monkeys, chimps, apes and baboons."

Humans are kind of bad, as well.

Steve said...

If they have thick hair all over them they are monkeys. And I will leave them alone.

Do we really need to discuss the great apes here in reference to a monkey petting a puppy?

Roughcoat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Roughcoat said...

"If they have thick hair all over them they are monkeys."

Or the Kardashians.

Paddy O said...

If it doesn't have a tail it's not a monkey, if it doesn't have a tail it's an ape.

John henry said...

Cayo Santiago is a small island off the east coast or Puerto Rico. The University of PR has an experimental station there where they raise Rhesus monkeys for research.

they apparently run around loose on the island.

We used to hear stories of people going there with the idea of getting a pet monkey. Bad idea. They attack in force and are particularly nasty.

I have no love for monkeys.

John Henry

Craig Landon said...

Unless you can talk to them, leave animals alone unless you intend to eat them. That's their point of view.

Clawmute said...

When I was in graduate school, I earned work-study money by caring for troops of semi-wild Old World monkeys (M. iris and M. specsiosa). The (~35) M irus were in one large, cyclone-enclosed runway, the speciosa in another. Both groups had a dominant male (40 lbs), several other adult males and some juvenile and infant males. Each adult male had large canine teeth (1.5" uppers and, unlike carnivore canine teeth, were trianglar in cross section and were sharpened on their rear edge [they were constantly honed on their sectorial premolars]).

Access to both runways was through a door with a lock on the outside (to unlock to get in) the other on the inside (to lock, once you were in, to keep the monkeys in the runway).

One day, I found myself trapped inside the runway with a juvenile male sitting on my shoulder screaming bloody murder and slapping my head. As I tried to exit the runway, my exit was blocked by the rest of the troop, each of which was hanging onto the fence and threatening me with classic threat gestures. The dominant male (Henry) was sitting on the door latch.

I could feel every hair on my body go into pilo erection . . .

I got out, luckily, because I found a way to exercise dominance over them (I told someone in the anteroom to grab the gloves we used to catch them and walk "pur. . . pur . . . purosly towards the (blocked) . . . at which time I was able to leave. (The gloves and nets we used to catch them were the ultimate threat.)

The point: They knew me full well as dominant. I could normally allow "Tommy"to ride on my shoulder with impunity . . . he'd often sit on my shoulder and groom my hair . . . and we got along fine.

But I made the mistake of thinking they liked me and were like nice domestic animals.

They are not.

iowan2 said...

My regular reminder that they are called animals for a reason. Even dogs and cats that have been 'domesticated' over thousands of years, will turn on those they know. Don't use the term 'love' that just adds to the confusion.
Animals can and will do you harm, eliminate from your conscience the notion that they somehow posses even a smidgen of morality. They don't, they are animals, driven by animal instincts, not emotions.

Anonymous said...

Steve said...
Monkeys have been known to rip faces and testicles off.

Fernandinande said...
Those were chimps, "our closest living relative", and they aren't monkeys.


Yeah, but it's not as if they wouldn't rip your face and testicles off if they could.

Amoral, psychopathic shits, the lot of 'em.

SteveR said...

Evolution gave humans brains that used to compensate for the physical superiority and allowed us to be the dominant land animal. In our modern cultures we are giving back that advantage.

Steve said...

I grew up on a U.S. military base in Southeast Asia. Monkeys came out of the jungle to steal lunch boxes. Every morning as I left for the bus my mother warned me to give the monkey the lunchbox. Eventually they posted Marines at the bus stops. The monkeys learned pretty quickly who the apex predator was.

madAsHell said...

I Have Misplaced My Pants -
Monkey Forest in Ubud?


Correct!!

CWJ said...

Monkeys and apes suck. Like nearly everyone else, I have my nasty monkey story. Now lemurs on the other hand...

glenn said...

Nooooo Commment!

Michael McNeil said...

I loathe all monkeys, chimps, apes and baboons.

This is incoherent. It's like saying ‘I loathe all mammals,’ when you are one. Chimps and baboons ARE apes — and, evolutionarily speaking (pace evolution-believer Althouse's decades-obsolete opinion in this regard), we humans are apes too — African apes, to be precise. (This is because humans and African apes collectively form a clade, much like birds and dinosaurs form a clade.)

We're not monkeys, on the other hand. Monkeys and apes, though both are primates, are not on the same line.

Quaestor said...

Chimps and baboons ARE apes.

No. Apes and humans are in the same clade, Hominidae. Baboons are large Old World monkeys which are more terrestrial than arboreal. They belong to the tribe Papionini along with macaques, mandrils, colobus monkeys and others.

Apes humans and baboons are all higher primates, but that's about as close as it gets.

Quaestor said...

Chimps and baboons ARE apes.

Perhaps you meant bonobos?

sojerofgod said...

Can we form a "I hate monkeys" club?
Looks like we have enough here for a charter.
maimouphobics Anon!
Right up there with Oikophobia (Fear of your own kind)
and
Oinkophobia (fear of pigs)

But I repeat myself?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I don't understand all this Monkey hate. I know they were manufactured, and they weren't the Beatles, but they had a few catchy tunes.

And the whole face-and-testicles-ripping-off thing was just the one show. And those people got full refunds.

Static Ping said...

I had a co-worker whose father had a service monkey. The monkey would do various tasks that the father could no longer do. Apparently everything went fine. So a well trained monkey is a good thing.

Wild animals are inherently dangerous no matter how cute the critter. Three words: dolphin gang rapes.

Of course, the entire purpose of this thread was for Ann to use that line in the comments. I wonder how long she has been waiting to use that zinger.

Michael McNeil said...

Chimps and baboons ARE apes.

Perhaps you meant bonobos?


Oops, sorry. Actually I was thinking gibbon when I read baboon — but bonobo will do. Once again tripped up by reading too fast with too little checking of one's thought….