Activists call for Boogie the monkey to be removed from Ontario roadside zoo
Animal welfare activists are calling on the province of Ontario to rescue a young macaque monkey displaying “troubling” behaviour at a roadside zoo in the town of Kincardine.
“We have filmed him performing stereotypical behaviours, which include spinning in circles, pacing back and forth in a repetitive motion, and also appearing to bite himself,” animal rights lawyer Camille Labchuk said.
“He lives by himself, so far as we can tell, in this enclosure and for those three years he has remained in that location every time we visit him and we are very troubled by what we’ve seen,” she said.
Animal Justice, a non-profit animal law organization, is calling on animal welfare authorities to seize the monkey, named Boogie, and relocate him from Bervie Zoo to Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Sunderland.
Labchuk said Animal Justice has filed multiple legal complaints with provincial animal welfare services about Boogie’s condition, but so far they have failed to remove him.
Georgia Mason, director of the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, viewed video of Boogie and referred to his movements as “classic abnormal behaviour.”
“It’s showing stereotypic behaviour, which are these repetitive rhythmic movements, so that’s the pacing and twisting and then the self-biting is a very common form of self-harm that you see in laboratory animals if they’re kept in poor conditions,” she said.
Mason said “most shocking” to her is seeing the monkey alone in the enclosure because primates are “highly social.”
“The fact that this animal has been by himself for at least two years and presumably many years longer, looking at his behaviour is just really not OK,” she added.
In 2023, World Animal Protection
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