Monkey See Monkey Do

Monkey school was not originally included in the master plan.  After visiting the long neck hill tribe and eating at the Tiger Kingdom buffet my driver recommended the monkey school.  When I say recommended I really mean forcefully insisted as he just drove me there without really asking if I wanted to go.  I’m sure he got some form of commission for taking me there.

I entered the monkey show and paid the admission fee of 200 baht ($6 USD) and was ushered to a small stadium like bleacher seating with the capacity of 50 or so.  There was an announcer over the loud speaker who told everyone to be seated for the show which would start in 5 minutes.

One of the "Students" at Monkey School

The Monkey School Show

The ability of the monkeys to perform human-like mental activities such as recognizing numbers and math were interesting.  The physical abilities of shooting basketballs with rather good accuracy, swimming to retrieve coins from the bottom of the pool and lifting weights was interesting as well.

The monkey school show was short and sweet as a different trainer came out with 3 or 4 different monkeys which they had collars and chains around their neck.  It started with a monkey retrieving these numbered markers when the number was announced.  The monkeys also did some math.  Next they came out with a shopping cart, retrieved coconuts, lifted weights, shot baskets and finally dove under water.

A volunteer from the crowd’s hands were bound and he was sat in front of the audience of around 10-20 people.  The announcer told the volunteer not to look at the monkey while he was untying the rope and when the volunteer did, the monkey gave him a pretty brutal slap across the face.  When he slapped the volunteers face the trainer yanked on the leash pretty hard jerking the monkey’s head.  While this probably wouldn’t be considered animal abuse how the monkeys were housed may have been, read on…

More Accurate Free Throw Shooter than Shaq

Monkey Prison?

While some consider any wild animal taken out of its natural habitat to be animal abuse this monkey school had some signs of less than optimal measures for keeping the monkeys captive.  Before and after viewing the show you can see the non-performing monkeys which were all chained up.  Many of the monkeys were walking around in circles which is all the movement which was allowed as they were chained up to a post.

The monkeys which weren’t walking around in circles looked dejected and many were coughing and seemed sick.  Needless to say I felt pretty bad for all the monkeys chained up so I bought a bunch of little bananas to feed them.  I fed every single monkey (around 20 or so) a banana.  It was pretty interesting that some of the monkeys got ready when they saw me with the bananas and caught them while others let the banana hit them on the head.

I shot the video (below) after I fed all the monkeys a banana so you can’t see how manic and dejected they looked while many were walking around in circles as the  show was on but you can hear the coughing of monkeys which I think were sick from living in bad conditions.

Overall Impression

While I enjoyed the 15 minute monkey school show, the mistreatment of the animals was hard not to notice.  As I mentioned before, having wild animals chained up in captivity is never good but it seemed like these monkeys could have been kept in better conditions which would have not had me leave Monkey School with a sour taste in my mouth.  I would recommend anyone traveling in the area to drop by unless time is of the essence.  If time in northern Thailand is short, monkey school is nothing you should be disappointed for missing.  If anything you can pay the 20 baht (60 cents) and buy a fruit basket to feed the poor chained up talented monkeys.

Monkeys Chained up while Not Performing