Baby monkey rides a piggie, backwards

Someone should really let the monkey know he's doing it wrong. Video Link

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

The piggie is actually a javelina.
Anonymous

Poor monkey has attachment issues from being taken away from it’s mother at an early age. Monkeys are very social creatures, after all.

Sad :(
monkey

monkey torture!
Anonymous

Aw, I feel bad for the motherless baby monkey.
Chupacabara

Funny. We are taught from a young age to pet animals from the head toward the tail.

There are countless jokes about the hazards of petting cats “Backwards”.

Yet every time a kid in the video pets the money, and I am not talking about when they pat it on the head at the 57sec mark, they pet the monkey backwards.

Maybe it’s because the monkey’s orientation is backwards to the pigs, and the pig, being bigger, is defining the overall orientation the “Petting” should go. Or maybe it’s because of the direction the pig moves… the pig moves THIS way, so the petting goes THAT way…

I don’t know. It just struck me on viewing the video and I caught myself asking “Why are they petting the monkey backwards?”
alllie

Torturing the baby monkey and baby pig and laughing about it. The monkey clings to the pig because it has been separated from its mother and kept in a tiny cage with a baby pig. The baby pig is looking for its mother as well.

Why are people like this. Why do they have so little empathy.
- Anonymous
  
  The animals are not actually kept in a cage. They are transported in a cage, and kept in a very nice rehabilitation center for wild animals. Both animals are social creatures, and enjoy being around their trainers and around other people since that is what they are used to. They are more domesticated now, yes, but they are in no way psychologically harmed. Sure, it was sad when the monkey got knocked off the baby pig, but he would get separated from his mother in the wild as well, and would have the same response. While clearly different, the animals are still well-adjusted and happy animals. People need to quit calling everything animal torture, because it’s really regressive when it comes to working with animals that have been abandoned or injured.
dasma

See Harry Harlow’s primate isolation experiments at UW-Madison. This monkey’s responses to the pig is similar to those in the Harlow studies when infants were denied warm living “mothers.” interesting in this context.
Jack

The point at 0:46 where the monkey loses the pig is harrowing. I would like to request a twee Unicorn chaser to sooth that trauma.
Brainspore

Get that piggy to the nearest Betty Ford clinic, stat.
kpkpkp

Backward makes better sense for going through tight spaces; more streamlined.
knijon

This was a nice “monkey riding pig chaser” to bring a chuckle after reading the stomach-turning Abu Ghraib post. And in that sense, at this particular moment, I also have little empathy for these animals. In a few hours though, I most surely will.
Anonymous

Wow.. I want stuff like this happening in my back yard. Damn it Toronto!!!
nanuq

That`s pig`s squeals translates out to: “Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”
forgeweld

The whole thing is just so hentai.
Anonymous

Found this video just really sad – both animals looked like they needed someone to rescue them :(
Anonymous

PIG IS FUTURE MONKEY IS PAST.
Jack

Why is everyone implying this monkey has no mother? MAYBE THIS MONKEY JUST LOVES THE PIG!!!
Anonymous

This is sad.
2k

add a pig and in 42 million years you’ve got yourself a meme.
Freddie Freelance

OK, that baby Wild Pig is CUTE, but does anyone know what kind it is? It looks like it could be one of the Philippine Wild Pigs; maybe a Visayan Warty Pig?
- markbellis
  
  It’s probably just a Japanese wild boar – in the comments it’s called an Uribo – (melon boy) – a nickname for the piglet as the patterns on its fur remind them of melons.
  Those might just be orphans that have been brought into the petting zoo.
Anonymous

Am i the only one thinking about where the baby monkey’s mother is? The monkey seems pretty scared and alone…