Bob likes to wrestle and play. Vervet monkeys are good jumpers and climbers. (illustration credit 7.1)
Could an old Olive baboon and two baby Vervet monkeys make a real family? Maybe not in the wild. But for Suzie, Bob, and Caleb, the weird mix worked. They found each other after tough times alone.
Suzie was very small when she was adopted more than 25 years ago. She weighed less than three pounds. She is an Olive baboon. She had thick black fur and a sweet pink face. Suzie was so cute. People smiled and laughed when they saw her.
The people who bought her didn’t break the law. Keeping monkeys was allowed in their Kentucky neighborhood. But they probably didn’t know how hard it was for the baboon.
“Babies are pulled from their mothers too soon,” said Eileen Dunnington, an expert caretaker at the Primate Rescue Center. “This stops the mother-baby bonding. It is very hurtful to both the mother and baby.”
Suzie’s owners didn’t think about that when they bought her. They thought of how much they would love her. They promised to care for Suzie forever.
Keeping the promise was easy when Suzie was little. Everything was easy when she was small. Her cage in the basement seemed so big. She was hardly ever in her cage because her owners wanted to play with her all the time. Owning a baby Olive baboon was fun.
Then Suzie started to grow.
Her black coat disappeared. The thick olive coat she was named for took its place. She gained weight quickly. In no time, she weighed 32 pounds.
She wasn’t a tiny baby anymore. She was more than three feet long. Her cage seemed a whole lot smaller.
Once she wasn’t a cute little baby, Suzie got easier to ignore. Most of the time, Suzie was alone.
Being alone is hard for an Olive baboon. Monkeys like Suzie normally live in Africa, where it is loud and lively with wildlife. Baboon troops have 20 to 100 noisy members. They scamper together across the savannah.
Female troop leaders keep watch over dozens of Olive baboons of all ages. They hunt. They play. They groom one another. They even sleep together.
Suzie slept and ate and daydreamed all by herself.
Food was also a problem for Suzie. In nature, she would have been an omnivore (sounds like OM-nee-vore). That means she would have gobbled up whatever food she could find. Her troop would have wandered for miles. They would have eaten grasses, roots, fruits, and insects. She might have even eaten birds or injured animals, if she was hungry enough.
Suzie’s human family didn’t have African fruits or vegetables. They didn’t have insects or antelope, either. They fed her human food that wasn’t healthy for a growing monkey.
Suzie grew fat because she had no way to exercise. She mostly stayed in her cage. She couldn’t even stretch her restless, long legs.
Year after year, Suzie got sicker. And she became scared.
When Suzie turned 25 years old, her owners asked for help. They called the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
When Bob was born, he was an average little Vervet monkey. He was living with a private breeder.
The breeder raised baby monkeys for money. He sold them to strangers as pets. For some reason, no one wanted to buy Bob.
Bob was cute. He was only a few weeks old. He still had his light-colored baby face and blackish-colored fur. He weighed less than two pounds. He certainly had a lot of energy—too much energy maybe.
Bob got into everything when he was out of his cage. He climbed up curtains. He knocked things over. He didn’t have sharp teeth yet. But crazy little Bob was quite a handful.
Weeks passed. The breeder needed Bob’s cage for a new baby. So, the breeder’s friend agreed to become Bob’s foster mother. She took him home with her.
In the wilds of Africa, Bob would have stayed with his mother for four months. He would have gotten the nutrition he needed from her rich milk.
His mother would have taught him how to be a smart Vervet monkey. She would have cared for him for a year, while he learned to hunt. Then his mother would have stopped looking out for him.
Monkey Mothers and Babies
A primate mother bonds with her infant right after it is born. The mother knows her baby’s smell. She knows how it looks and how it sounds.
Monkey babies are helpless when they are born. They would die if their mothers didn’t care for them so well. The mother’s instinct is very strong. If a mother loses her newborn, she may even adopt another mother’s baby.
A mother monkey even kisses her baby. She will gently touch her mouth to her little monkey’s lips.
Hundreds of other female monkeys would have cuddled him. They would have cared for him, a lot like his mother had done.
In Africa, Bob would have been busy. He would have played, hunted, and groomed himself all day. He would have “talked” to other monkeys. He would never have been lonely. He would have had many friends around.
Bob’s new foster mom knew all that. She worried about Bob.
“She was aware of the problem, so she reached out to us,” Eileen said. “She wanted to give him the best life possible.” So, Bob’s foster mom made a decision. The best life outside of Africa would be at the Primate Rescue Center.
Like Bob, Caleb was a lively Vervet monkey. Only when he left the breeder who had raised him, he had no trouble finding a home. A man bought him. He kept Caleb in a cage when they weren’t playing together.
Then Caleb’s owner took a new job. He had to travel a lot. So, he hired a kind babysitter for Caleb.
Again and again, she took Caleb to her house when his owner was away. Soon she grew impatient. She would care for Caleb for weeks at a time. Then she would pack Caleb up and take him back home.
Bouncing from home to home was making Caleb afraid and shy. His babysitter worried. She asked Caleb’s owner to let him live with her forever. He agreed.
The babysitter called the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife. She wanted tips on keeping a Vervet monkey baby happy and healthy.
Instead, she found out that keeping Caleb was against the law in her town. Soon Caleb too was on his way to the Primate Rescue Center.