December 14 – World Monkey Day.
World Monkey Day came as a joke among students at the University of Michigan. One of the students marked December 14 as Monkey Day on the holiday calendar. It happened in 2000. Then the humorous prank ended with a humorous holiday celebrated by students. However, as often happens, the joke has gradually become a tradition, and the Internet has made it global. Artist Casey Sorrow and his friend began to use the idea of this holiday in their artwork and comics, which only contributed to the spread of the holiday first in the United States and then in other countries.
Gradually, the humorous tone of the celebration, when the participants dressed in monkey costumes and imitated them, began to acquire new features and forms. This round of development took place, first of all, thanks to zoologists and zoo workers, who began to prepare a festive program for World Monkey Day, which combined the cognitive aspect along with the humorous one. The holiday has no official international status and is not a state and national holiday of any country.
The purpose of the World Monkey Day is to spread information about primates and the manifestations of love and care for them.
Under the word "monkey" are usually understood all representatives of an order of primates except humans.
Monkeys are lively, cheerful and clever animals. They are the closest relatives of man among all the animal world, in fact, man and monkeys belong to the same order. They express their feelings in the same way as a person: they laugh, cry, rejoice, get angry, wonder.
Mykolaiv Zoo keeps these cute animals, too. The general collection of primates in Mykolaiv Zoo has up to 90 individuals belonging to 15 species. The following families live in our zoo: chimpanzees (Lat. Pan troglodytes), mandrills (Lat. Mandrillus sphinx), siamangs (Lat. Hylobates syndactylus), brown capuchins (Lat. Cebus apella), grivets (Lat. Cercopithecus aethiops), lion-tailed macaques (Lat. Macaca silenus), black-and-white ruffed lemur (Lat. Varecia variegata), red ruffed lemur (Lat. Varecia rubra), mangabeys (Lat. Cercocebus), ring-tailed lemurs (Lat. Lemur catta), cotton-top tamarins (Lat. Saguinus oedipus), squirrel monkeys (Lat. Saimiri), common marmosets (Lat. Callithrix jacchus) and a very large family of Japanese macaques (Lat. Macaca fuscata).
To date, all species of monkeys in our zoo breed.
Specialists of our zoo develop a variety of diets for monkeys, which includes everything they need. They also use a creative approach in serving the menu, thus ensuring the busyness of animals kept in captivity. What "tricks" are not invented by employees for smart monkeys: bananas in cardboard boxes, berries in plastic bottles, interesting ladders and lianas of different materials. Visitors can watch our clever families of monkeys for hours.
Today for the World Monkey Day in Mykolaiv Zoo various delicacies (figs, bananas, apples) were prepared for our monkeys as a gift.