A resident of the eastern Polish city of Chełm was surprised this week to find a small monkey – an animal certainly not native to Poland – on her balcony. She immediately called the municipal police.
Despite accepting the call, the officers went to the site with some degree of scepticism. When animal control in Kraków received a similar call last year, they famously discovered that the mysterious creature spotted by a resident was actually a croissant stuck in a tree.
“Officers who went to the scene of the report were surprised to confirm the monkey being on the balcony,” the municipal police wrote on Facebook, sharing images of the primate.
The animal, a white-tufted marmoset, turned out to belong to one of the residents of the apartment block where the woman who found it lives. The police safely returned it to its owner.
Marmosets are small monkeys, measuring 18-19 cm, with relatively long tails and white tufted ears. They are native to Brazil, but have become increasingly popular as pets – something experts advise against.
“This species of broad-beaked monkey, or white-eared marmoset, has been popular in recent years,” Bartłomiej Gorzkowski, president of the Lublin Epicrates Foundation, an organisation dedicated to looking after exotic animals, told TVN24.
“Unfortunately, people often keep single individuals in their homes, which is a very bad idea. They are herd animals that should live in a group,” he said. In the wild, marmosets live in family groups inhabiting areas of up to 40 hectares.
“A human being is in no way able to provide such conditions,” said Gorzkowski. “Especially when they buy a single animal and keep it in an apartment. It is not difficult to imagine the effect this has on the monkey’s psyche. In my opinion, such behaviour is a form of animal abuse and should be punished.”
Monkeys of this species are increasingly being brought into the custody of the foundation, as they are very difficult to care for.
“Every year our foundation receives at least a dozen requests for help in finding a new home for a monkey,” the foundation wrote on Facebook last year. “The fashion for keeping monkeys in apartments is unfortunately not declining, while the knowledge and awareness of the needs of these animals is non-existent in many cases.”
Gorzkowski added that the rising popularity of marmosets as pets might be helped by the fact that every year they are becoming cheaper to buy and people find them cute, sometimes dressing up the animals in costumes and bows.
But owners often struggle to maintain a balanced diet for the monkey, as well as with its aggression and the fact that they cannot be taught to use a litter box.
Main image credit: Straż Miejska Chelm/Facebook
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
