Keeping a monkey as a pet? Experts: Not only is it illegal, but it can also kill you

Check out the news for The Knows Synthesis

2021-08-18 11:27

Since the beginning of July, a stray monkey macaque on the outskirts of Shanghai has frequently haunted many parts of Jinshan District, and even boldly entered residents' homes to steal, steal tomatoes, peanuts, and even bite the pigeons raised by residents.

Over the past month or so, residents of Zhujing, Tinglin, Lüxiang, Langxia and other places in Jinshan have successively reported more than a dozen "man-monkey encounters" incidents. However, when the staff of the public security and forestry departments arrived, the monkey had already escaped. The staff involved in the hunt said that the macaque was too alert to be caught so far.

According to the clues currently available, many professionals tend to think that this macaque monkey is a pet that is artificially and illegally raised, and after it is raised, it is abandoned, resulting in it wandering all the way.

What are the other risks of raising macaques individually?

He Xin, an associate researcher at the Shanghai Museum of Natural History, said that macaques are national second-level protected animals, and breeding should have corresponding qualifications, in addition to legal risks, the biggest risk is a threat to personal life and health. Macaque itself is not a domesticated pet, not suitable as a domesticated animal, in its growth, its childhood cute habits will be transformed into ferocious uncontrollable behavior, then there will be attack, bite some behaviors appear, which is very dangerous; on the other hand, the macaque itself is a primate, many diseases on its body, including some infectious diseases, some viruses will be directly transmitted to the human body. Some papers point out that some researchers, some close contacts will get some diseases and even death cases in macaques.