Monkey Helpers

monkeys

Monkeys are incredibly intelligent animals, which is one reason they are so often trained to help people in the home and community. Our monkey helpers can retrieve dropped items, open doors, turn pages of books, scratch itches, push buttons and switches for computers, TVs and remotes and much more. In addition to providing invaluable assistance, they also provide great companionship.

In the wild, monkeys are diurnal (active during the day), social and territorial. They spend most of their time searching for food, urinating to mark their territory and hanging out in trees. They are voracious eaters with diets that include fruits, leaves, bark, twigs, insects and even small animals.

Most monkeys are omnivorous, but some species are primarily frugivorous or insectivorous. Some monkeys have specialized anatomy for exploiting specific foods. For example, howler monkeys and colobus monkeys have long digestive tracts that allow them to extract hard-to-digest leaf nutrients by a process similar to ruminating. Gelada monkeys, on the other hand, are primarily herbivores and have multi-chambered stomachs that enable them to ferment plant matter, such as leaves, stems and gum.

Like all primates, monkeys have a very varied diet and require high levels of water intake to be healthy. They are not suited to life in captivity, and many monkeys housed as pets suffer from physical and mental health issues related to their poor diet and unnatural living conditions. According to Tyson, “Monkeys raised in captivity may have diabetes caused by too much sugary processed junk food, lose muscle and develop a range of other health problems such as osteoporosis and arthritis due to an insufficient amount of exercise.” They can also display stereotypies, which are signs of mental distress, including pacing, rocking and self-harm.