Late at night, when everyone’s asleep, I watch baby monkeys
on YouTube. They have their own channels, and there are new videos every day. The
owners of the monkeys are young women from Thailand or Vietnam where the
monkeys are available in the forests. These women seem to care about the
monkeys, hugging and kissing them, bathing, feeding, diapering and dressing the
monkeys in human clothes. But one can’t help but feel that the bottom line is
there is money to be made by posting these videos.
The monkeys are bottle-fed, eagerly watching their human
‘mother’ mixing the powdered formula with water. Sometimes the monkeys get
fruit, but they have to wait and wait until it’s cut up or mashed, reaching for
it and getting swatted away. When the woman is diapering one monkey, with a
disposable infant diaper (a hole poked in it for the tail), the other monkeys
are made to watch and wait. They are trained to be docile, waiting their turn,
but inevitably, like children, they step out of line and are reprimanded. The
monkeys are so small and light that the woman picks them up like chess pieces
and moves them back to where they belong. She’s constantly rearranging the
monkeys, putting them in order, like a drill sergeant. Instead of the expected
screeching, the monkeys make clicking sounds. They move so fast, it’s almost
like a trick of the eye seeing them go from here to there. At their wildest,
the baby monkeys ricochet off the wall.
They bathe the monkeys in kiddie pools, using
people-shampoo, which is probably harsh, and rub the monkeys harder than
necessary. They clean their hairless red tushies that make you feel embarrassed
to look at. They rinse them by pouring potfuls of water on their heads, and
then wrap them in towels. At this point, sometimes the women cuddle them.
It’s more about discipline than love. But that’s what keeps
me watching, in a weird way. The monkeys are adorable, with their quick eyes
darting, and their heavy eyelids, especially when they look at the camera. An
older baby monkey might hold a younger monkey like a doll. Or the littlest baby
will wrap its hand around another one’s leg, for some contact. Sometimes they clutch
onto the woman, as they would do with a mother, and when she plucks them off,
they complain with jerky movements and try to hang on. The videos have titles
like “Monkey Cry Hug Chair Not Want to Bathing When Mom Call Him,” and
“Obedient Monkey Sitting Wait Mom Mixed Milk.”
Sometimes the children of the women look on or help. Do they
ever question why their mothers are giving more attention to the monkeys than
to their own kids?
There are more angry comments than there are fans of the
channels. Yes, the monkeys are cute with their close-together eyes, flat-top
hairdos, and human-like features, but people are enraged that the monkeys
aren’t left alone to live in their natural setting, free and wild. I agree, and
I started wondering how these infant monkeys are so plentiful if they weren’t
taken from their mother’s breast? They don’t just appear at the pet shop. What
is the back story?
I just saw a video nestled among the monkey videos that tells
us that the mother monkeys are murdered as hunters and poachers take the baby
monkeys after birth and sell them to the YouTube channels. “They’re exploiting
these animals. And when they’re old, they are dumped back into the forest and
torn to shreds, not knowing how to defend themselves. These governments need to
make this illegal. Why does YouTube enable this? There are thousands of monkey YouTube
channels. These videos should be banned.”
I am entertained by the videos, as I am by cat videos. But cats
in cat videos are not held captive in the same way. Monkeys are more
intelligent, and more like us. You feel that they are going to explode with
rage one day; they have no choice but to comply and wear these doll clothes. I
am truly fascinated by observing how another species behaves, and it’s even
more interesting to see how they act in this unnatural setting. But that it’s
purely for the viewer’s merriment is not fair to the monkeys. A part of me
wants to hold the monkeys, love them and care for them, help them escape. I
feel sorry for them, and after this, will I refuse to watch another monkey
video, in protest and solidarity? I tell myself to stop, but the next video
pops up, and I watch it with guilt, like watching a snuff film.
