One YouTube playlist of 112 videos on the site titled 'Kill baby monkeys' has been viewed nearly 200,000 times and includes various strange abuse videos.
PATRICK KNOX: Baby monkeys are being tortured, exploited and even killed in a wave of sick cruelty YouTube videos. Animal rights activists have slammed the social media giant for continuing to host the disturbing clips which appear to be part of a huge trend of videos being filmed in South-East Asia.
Disturbing clips show the primates getting throttled, slapped, menaced with pliers or even killed. It took just minutes to find numerous shocking abuse videos – some of which have hundreds of thousands of views each – under the hashtag #monkey_tube. Many showed the monkeys being dressed in clothes and nappies before being tormented and tortured – with some including links asking for donations.
One video we viewed showed a man throttling a baby monkey – with the video title boasting he made her “super loud cry”. Another clip showed a monkey’s limbs being gripped as he was held upside down and slapped by his “mum”. And another video shows a desperate monkey clinging to her “dad” before he then hurls her into a lake so she can “learn to swim”.
One YouTube playlist of 112 videos on the site titled “Kill baby monkeys” has been viewed nearly 200,000 times and includes various strange abuse videos… Twisted commenters also egg the abusers on and suggest various ways they can harm the animals, often under the pretence of “discipline”…
Meanwhile in another strange series of videos, monkeys are forced to carry out “cute” scenes as part of storylines in a type of online YouTube soap opera by their captors. Monkey newborns and infants are placed in bizarre, upsetting or dangerous situations in these “shows” – which can end up with them being killed. These monkey soap operas appeared to be common in Cambodia where the scenes are staged for YouTube.
Baby monkeys are often taken away from their mothers to create a film about a cute orphan in distress. The more disturbing trend has been to hurt the little ones by placing them with adult monkeys – who are not their mothers – leading them to be rejected, sometimes falling out of trees and becoming injured or killed. Placing infants in dramatic situations is also common as the abusers try to win YouTube views…
Animal rights organisation PETA said: “YouTube existing policies should see these horrific channels taken down immediately, but their content moderation – and response to PETA – has been lacking”… Sarah Kite, the co-founder of the non-profit Action for Primates, said: “Basically, these monkeys were being tortured, and footage of that torture and their suffering was filmed and broadcast on YouTube. Such behaviour should not be tolerated”…
A YouTube spokeswoman said: “YouTube guidelines prohibit content featuring violence – this includes animal abuse. “Any flagged content found to violate our policies is removed from YouTube immediately. Upon review, both channels have been terminated for violating our Community Guidelines”…
It had also recently emerged that monkeys are being used as forced labour in farms. A shocking report from animal rights charity PETA last month revealed that the animals are used in the production of common supermarket coconut products like oil, milk and yoghurt. With the milk market alone worth up to $563 million worldwide, monkeys are made to scale 30m trees and pick up to 1000 coconuts a day. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: