Mounted specimen of pig-tailed macaque on exhibition in Teeth, Talons and Taxidermy. Photo / Whanganui Regional Museum
To monkey around. To make a monkey out of someone. Monkey business. More fun than a barrel of monkeys. Cheeky monkey.
We humans have been using language to compare our behaviour with monkeys for centuries.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, where there are no wild monkeys, we are all familiar with these sayings.
In the Teeth Talons and Taxidermy exhibition at the Whanganui Regional Museum there is a juvenile southern pig-tailed macaque, from India.
Macaques are old world monkeys, found throughout Asia, North Africa, and Gibraltar.
These little primates are highly adaptable and can survive, even thrive almost anywhere.
I had always felt an unwarranted aversion to monkeys. A biological hangover perhaps stemming from when humans were in direct competition with monkeys for food.
The more I read and the more documentaries I watched about these incredible animals, the more similarities I saw between them and us.
Infants, not unlike human babies, are extremely vulnerable. They need their mothers for milk and protection for their first two years.
Females stay with their mothers their whole lives and inherit their mother's status within the troop. Males, when they reach sexual maturity at around four years, leave their mothers' troop, and find one of their own. This is to stop inbreeding.
The length of tail indicates the time that a species of monkey spends in the trees. The longer the tail the more time spent swinging through the treetops.
Macaques are clever too, known to use rocks to open shellfish.
Some macaques even understand the human concept of trade. "I'll give your cell phone back if you give me some food."
Macaques are always hungry. Baby monkeys are known to gekker, or throw tantrums, especially when being weaned by the mother.
The troop hierarchy they live by is a strict one. Breaking rules can mean death. A macaque who is of a lower rank or younger must never look an older or higher-ranking monkey in the eye.
Older and high-ranking monkeys eat first. Everyone keeps an eye on the babies, but a high-ranking female can kidnap a lower-ranking macaque's baby and there's nothing the mother can do.
These kidnappings can end in death for the baby. Life in a troop can be hard but it is no comparison to the life a monkey must endure when in the hands of humans.
Macaques are highly social animals. Their troop is their family. To take an infant macaque from its family and raise it in isolation in a human home is hugely traumatising.
It can cause depression and aggression in infant macaques. Some never recover.
Baby monkeys are sold in great numbers on the black market as pets. When they reach around seven months, they become difficult to manage and many are then abandoned by their owners.
Dumped in a troop, human-raised macaques do not know monkey law. Many are killed. Monkeys are wild animals, not pets.
Of all the animals in the world, macaques are at the top of the list for animal abuse.
They were used for decades as lab rats. There is a frightening new trend of baby monkey exploitation videos on social media platforms like Youtube and Facebook.
We humans can help our primate cousins. We are civilised, aren't we? Perhaps we should say "Not my circus, not my monkey".
