OpenTube

Why Don't We Ever Eat Monkey Meat?

Fauna Code

6,654 views

Humans have eaten almost everything, from sea cucumbers to songbirds, so why has the monkey never made it onto a supermarket shelf anywhere on Earth?

It is not fear and it is not a universal taboo. It is a chain of causes that ends with a blood sample frozen in 1959.

Five suspects get put on trial: fear, taboo, the farming entrance exam that only around fourteen large animals ever passed, the uncanny valley Masahiro Mori described in 1970, and the biology of viruses jumping between close relatives. Along the way you meet Gibraltar’s Barbary macaques, Campbell’s monkey alarm calls, and the Bali macaques running a crime economy. Then comes the Léopoldville sample, HIV-1 traced to chimpanzees in Cameroon, HIV-2 traced to the sooty mangabey, Ebola, mpox and CITES.

The next time something on your plate feels completely normal, remember the line between food and not-food was drawn long before you were born. This video is educational and not medical advice.

Topics covered:
What monkeys actually are
Old World versus New World monkeys
Bali macaques and monkey intelligence
Why fear and taboo fail
Why monkeys can’t be farmed
The uncanny valley and meat paradox
HIV origins in primates
Butchering risk and primate viruses
Primate extinction and CITES law

#AnimalFacts #MonkeyMeat #DocumentaryExplainer #Primates

20 Comments

@DanielleWillis-d1y 21 hours ago

They do in Africa….and in South America

@RaimoHöft 20 hours ago

I have "News" for you ... Bush Meat! 😑

@ludwigsamereier8204 1 day ago

AFAIK Africans still eat monkeys, albeit in secret. They call them bush meat and it´s offered in all big cities.

@kittehboiDJ 1 day ago

Yeah, monkey meat is eaten around the world. It's bushmeat, not farmed.

@B.Pa-k4b 1 day ago (edited)

So HIV is a zoonosis, I've heard and read about that. By the way, smallpox, measles, flu, Covid and other diseases are apparently also zoonoses, i.e. viruses that jump from animals, mostly pets, to humans. But who is "we"? Of course, most people don't eat monkeys, but unfortunately some do. However, for several reasons it is obviously a good idea, not to hunt and eat animals, that are similar to us humans, and one is because pathogens cross the species barrier particularly easily due to genetic similarity.

@lastnewsnetwork6299 22 hours ago (edited)

Chilled Monkey Brains is a mythical desert. Not a plate but a bowl!

@diarmuidosullivan7391 21 hours ago

You haven't heard of the ebola virus and how we keep getting it despite its virulence? Bush meat. 😋

@ulyseebrown388 11 hours ago

Halfway through, your slides became out of sequence. From that point the slides no longer correlated to the spoken dialogue. Very frustrating.

@LeeMccormick-n2e 21 hours ago

I have eaten barbequed gibbon meat. I tried it when I was in Thailand. I was visiting a small village up in the mountains. They had a water project which they were quite proud of. There was a little dam which backed up a tiny lake on the side of the mountain. This gave the village actual gravity-driven running water, which was quite a big deal. There were tall trees around this tiny lake. Gibbons would swing between these trees. The townspeople would shoot them to keep them from defecating in their water. The thing is, gibbons and in fact all monkeys are unbelievably strong. That makes their meat extremely tough. Way too tough for a westerner to enjoy.

@javaman005 21 hours ago

“Leopoldville, a city we now call Kinsasha…” OH, thanks for clearing that up,… Not. I’ve never heard of Kinshasa either!

@PFRAY 10 hours ago

If monkeys were native to North America those eating roadkill, gators and snakes would be eating them too.

@star01248 17 hours ago

You do not address cannibalism which is common in humans other primates and many other animal species .!

@Grrymjo 22 hours ago

I am sorry, but do your slides have any correlation with what you are saying?

@Mr.Majestic77 19 hours ago

Because it's damn cannibalism

@paperbrainscience 20 hours ago

Alot of Africans consume monkeys and there never have been any outbreak

@Jae_brett 22 hours ago (edited)

Maybe I'm missing the point here... But WHY would people choose to eat monkey if there's better options? Might as well do a why don't we eat pelicans, too.

@daviejz6698 12 hours ago

In the Philippines they eat their brains.

@cherylcarroll 17 hours ago

Ima fan of your videos. Constructive feedback here. The order of the images in this one is terrible. They are off topic and overly repetitive. It was interesting, so I chose to listen instead of watching.