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0:00This video is brought to you by FarmKind.
More about them at the end of the video.
0:05About 70 years ago, a new
fad caught on: pet monkeys.
0:09At one point, more than a million
Americans had monkeys in their homes.
0:13But things didn’t go well.
0:15Hi, I’m David, and this is MinuteEarth.
0:18You can turn any wild animal into a
pet; you just capture it and keep it.
0:22But while some wild animals are
naturally good pets –because they
0:24are gentle and don’t get too bothered
by humans– most are just too wild.
0:29But we humans have figured out a way to
turn some of those wilder wild animals
0:32into good pets –and even human helpers–
through the process of domestication.
0:37But not monkeys, because not all
animals are equally domesticatable.
0:41Like, if you were to pick a
good monkey to domesticate,
0:43you’d probably pick a capuchin
like my friend Garfunkle here,
0:46who is just plain adorable –and smart
and agile enough to maybe even help out.
0:51The first step toward domestication
would be to capture a bunch of capuchins.
0:54Which would be hard enough, but you
also have to keep them captured.
0:57And while some animals –like sheep and
chickens– do just fine in confinement,
1:01capuchins are dextrous escape artists who are
really hard to keep locked up in simple pens.
1:06You might end up with no monkeys at all.
1:08But say you could somehow make capuchin-proof
pens, you’d then need to carefully breed the
1:12monkeys to select for the traits you want
– and to get rid of the ones you don’t.
1:16And then you’d have to keep doing
that over hundreds of generations.
1:19Animals like pigs can start giving
birth when they're 6 months old,
1:22and can have 3 litters a year of 10 piglets each.
1:24So it’s a relatively quick process
to select for the traits you want.
1:28But capuchins take four years to mature and
only have one baby every two years or so.
1:32So it would take a really, really long time
to breed capuchins with the traits we want.
1:36But even if you had that kind of time,
there’s one additional problem: diseases.
1:41Since capuchins have immune systems
that are really similar to our own,
1:44they can give us all sorts of diseases,
and maybe even brew up new primate plagues.
1:48So a capuchin domestication project
would likely be a giant mess.
1:52That said, we have managed
to domesticate the horse,
1:55which shares 2 of the 3 of those
domestication difficulties.
1:58But horses had traits that could revolutionize
2:00transportation and farming and warfare,
literally shaping our modern world,
2:05so at least in that case it paid off to go
through the trouble of domesticating them.
2:08But the endgame for capuchins, on the other hand,
would simply be cute pets – or maybe a helping
2:13hand; domesticating them just wouldn’t be worth
the trouble – if it would even be possible at all.
2:17So what did happen with all those undomesticated
2:20pet monkeys that Americans
brought into their homes?
2:22Well, it was monkey mayhem;
within just a few years,
2:25primate sanctuaries started popping up to house
all the monkeys people could no longer handle.
2:30It turns out that when it comes to keeping
animals, it’s mo’ monkey, mo’ problems.
2:38Of the animals we have been able to
domesticate, some have become companions,
2:41some have become workers, and
some have become, well, food.
2:45And while we here at MinuteEarth disagree about
whether it’s ok to eat animals in general,
2:49we all agree that no animal deserves to be kept
in cruel conditions like those on factory farms.
2:54That’s where FarmKind comes in: Based on
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3:07cruelty like battery cages, painful procedures
without anaesthetic and inhumane slaughter.
3:12We’ve donated to FarmKind, and if you
feel able, we’d love for you to join us.
3:16The link is in the description:
3:17Use code minuteearth, and your
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