Monkeys have been touted as excellent pets both by legitimate pet shops and black market dealers, most of whom don’t keep a pet monkey themselves. To a certain extent, monkeys make great pets. They’re amusing, interesting, and easy to feed. On the other hand, they also tend to fling their own poo at whatever angers or threaten them. People tend to think that monkeys are basically just little people. It’s easy to mistake them for miniature humans since they sometimes behave as a human would. Capuchin monkeys in particular, have a wide range of facial expressions similar to that of a human’s.

The problem with thinking that monkeys are miniature humans is that they’re not. They’re monkeys. Like humans, capuchin monkeys are social animals. They learn how to be a capuchin monkey from other capuchin monkeys. Young capuchin monkeys learn appropriate monkey behavior, means of communication, and hierarchy within their troupe. Take them out of their native habitat and they’ll never learn to be a proper little monkey.

They will have to make a great deal of adjustment when incorporated into a human home where hierarchy is not clearly shown by means of grooming, communication is done by making complicated sounds as well as facial expressions, and behavior is wildly different from the behavior of capuchin monkeys in the wild. They may eventually be able to adjust, but it will be difficult and stressful for them. They will always feel out of place among humans, and if they were raised from babyhood in a human household, they will also feel out of place among other capuchin monkeys. They’ll feel uncomfortable in the former because they know that humans are radically different from them. They’ll be treated as an outcast by the latter because they have never learned proper capuchin monkey behavior, never having been exposed to it. Capuchin monkeys who grew up as pets are caught in the middle. They’re full grown by the age of five but will never truly learn to be human, nor monkey.

People who would like to make pets out of them should make absolutely sure that they could adequately fill all the needs of a capuchin monkey. These needs include the basics like food, shelter, and safety as well as the higher needs of socialization and affection. Capuchin monkeys will always be wild animals at heart and humans shouldn’t delude themselves into believing that they’re just ‘little people’. People should realize that keeping exotic animals as pets require a different level of care and knowledge.

Environmental conservationists believe that keeping wild animals as household pets is not the right way of saving them as a species. Instead, they advocate saving more of the endangered species natural habitat. Capuchin monkeys as a species may not particularly be in danger but there are a lot of other species highly sought as exotic pets by unscrupulous humans. As a matter of fact, it is their value as a pet that makes black-market dealers all the more anxious to acquire them for trade, thus decimating their species even more.