How a ‘Pet’ Monkey Inspired a Fight to End Trade in Primates in the US

People who want primates as pets may have good intentions, but Gizmo’s owner soon realized the growing vervet monkey was meant to stay in the wild all along, and never should have fallen victim to the pet trade.

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Gizmo is a nine-year-old vervet monkey. Belonging to a species whose natural range is across eastern and southern Africa, Gizmo should have been born thousands of miles from the United States into a large group of friends and family. He should have been roaming around with those of his own kind, facing life’s joys, disappointments, and challenges on a daily basis. Instead, he was deliberately bred to be sold for profit into the US primate pet trade. Torn from his mother, likely at a few weeks old, Gizmo was sold to “M”, who had dreamed of having a monkey as a pet since she was a child.

Owning a monkey started out as fun for M. Gizmo was tiny, vulnerable, and needed her love and attention. He would go everywhere with M – car rides, boat rides, visits to the store. But as he got bigger and stronger, he began to tear things up and taking him out in public became too risky, so he was confined to their home; his already limited world becoming smaller. As he continued to grow, he began to bite. He didn’t want to wear a diaper and would fight M when she tried to put one on him. At first, his bites did not break the skin because his canine teeth had not yet come in. That would have changed soon.

The biting continued, and M began to wear protective clothing to try and handle him. This eventually included a hockey helmet, thick jacket, and thick gloves. M knew that now it was not a question of if he would bite her but when.

Gizmo’s world got smaller still when he was confined to his cage as his aggressive and dangerous behavior became more frequent. He began showing aggression towards M’s adult children. Other family members were bitten by Gizmo, resulting in multiple trips to the ER. Fearful of the consequences of admitting how the injuries were caused, M lied to the doctors and told them the deep lacerations had been caused by her cat.

More on the topic: Animal Captivity Is A Dangerous Distraction from Real Conservation Efforts

More time passed, and Gizmo reached his eighth birthday. One day, when M’s daughter and her boyfriend were visiting, Gizmo slipped out of his cage and viciously attacked her daughter’s partner. It took two adults to pull Gizmo off of him, but not before the man had suffered serious injuries to his head and shoulder, which required 18 stitches.

This, said M, was when she knew things had gone too far and she admitted to herself the truth that she had been avoiding for years: Gizmo did not belong caged in her home. 

This could have spelled tragedy for Gizmo. Many monkeys will be killed after attacking a human, or simply sold onto a new unsuspecting owner who continues to cage them as the monkeys’ lives become progressively more miserable. 

M made the right decision. She contacted an accredited sanctuary – The Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary – and asked for help.

In August 2023, Gizmo was transported by road by sanctuary staff from Indiana to South Texas to begin his new life. Now, almost a year later, he is thriving as part of a social group with five other monkeys. Gizmo has a large open-top enclosure to enjoy, excellent veterinary care, a nutritious diet and, most importantly, friends of his own kind for the first time. As Gizmo gets his happy ending, M is determined to prevent others from purchasing a pet monkey.

And so it was that M joined Born Free CEO Angela Grimes, and expert lobbyist Jennifer Place to take her story to Capitol Hill in June of this year. Meeting with representatives, both M and another former “pet” monkey owner spoke to lawmakers about their experiences and used their unique perspectives to call for support for the Captive Primate Safety Act. This vital law would see the trade in primates as pets in the US banned and monkeys like Gizmo spared the harm of being sold for profit. The Born Free contingent was delighted to receive a warm reception in many of their meetings and their work secured multiple new co-sponsors for the bill.

“The Captive Primate Safety Act will do for primates what the Big Cat Public Safety Act did for big cats last year; it would get them out of private homes for good,” said Grimes. “No wild animal should be kept as a pet, not just because of the enormous welfare compromises it creates, but also because of the very serious public safety risks. Stories such as Gizmo’s are played out thousands of times across the country and yet only a small number of monkeys make it to sanctuaries. Most will spend their entire lives alone and confined to tiny cages.”

Born Free USA is calling on readers to contact their representatives to ask them to become a co-sponsor of this important bill. You can do so by following this link.

Featured image: Born Free USA.