![]() Videos from this channel show the poster hanging a macaque over a balcony and threatening to drop him, biting macaques on the tail or feet, hitting a macaque in the face and knocking over a macaque. The YouTuber told our investigator that she made mistakes in the beginning, saying that when the monkeys were “not listening,” she got angry and received complaints from the viewers. “Forcibly removing and depriving infant monkeys of their mothers and raising them in captivity in unnatural conditions is extremely cruel and will result in abnormal behavior and development and lead to severe psychological and physical problems,” said AFP Co-founder Sarah Kite.Īt one site, the investigator documented five young monkeys kept in a wire cage with a wire floor without any enrichment or platforms and witnessed the monkeys sucking their fingers – a clear coping mechanism when faced with stress, separation, or loss, according to experts. But the unlawful practice has proliferated, given a lack of law enforcement and the easy availability of wild monkeys, captured from the forests of Cambodia, according to AFP. It’s illegal to own macaques, and most other wild animals, as pets in Cambodia. One channel we investigated had videos with deplorable methods of “discipline,” including hitting and biting the macaques or hanging them upside down. Sometimes, the online videos even show cruelty outright. Lady Freethinker and Action for Primates sent an investigator to meet with several popular social media-channel owners in Cambodia, and what we learned was shocking - animals forced into cramped, barren wire cages with no access to food and water, and displaying stress-based behaviors. The reality for these monkeys when the camera turns off is much darker. Similar videos from other channels show clothed “pet” monkeys “dancing,” spinning in circles and playing with toys as their seemingly “loving” owners talk to them softly, smile, or laugh. Journal reference: Primates, DOI: 10.In the YouTube video, tiny infant macaques dressed in colorful, doll-like outfits sit fidgeting adorably in a row as their keeper puts rice cakes in front of them, chiding the animals when they reach to nibble before her command. “We recently hand-raised a young baboon, so we had a good chance of seeing that behaviour, but we didn’t,” he says. The researchers are now going to look for spontaneous smiles in newborns of other primate and perhaps even non-primate species to better understand their function.īen Gee of Melbourne Zoo in Australia, where orangutans and baboons are raised, says he has not seen any smilers. Another possibility is that the infants grin in response to their dreams, but this is difficult to establish, Kawakami says. Spontaneous smiles probably help develop facial muscles for social smiling later on, he says. Spontaneous smiles were once believed to help foster parental love, but ultrasound images showing these expressions in unborn human fetuses undermined that idea, says Kawakami. After this age, spontaneous smiles are gradually replaced by ‘social smiles’– voluntary facial expressions that adult people and primates use to communicate. The types of smiling seen in newborns are different to those of adults, says Kawakami.īefore about 2 months of age, newborns often smile as they sleep, but it is just a spontaneous lifting of one or both corners of the mouth. ![]() “We are not sure what is triggering this smiling in their brains,” says Kawakami. In comparison, human babies smile twice per hour, while dozing infant chimpanzees smile just once in 5 hours in REM sleep. The baby macaques smiled 41 times an hour in REM sleep, and not at all in non-REM sleep.
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