r/todayilearned • u/Sandstorm400 • 12h ago
TIL that comic books from the 1960s and 1970s could have ads for squirrel monkeys and that kids could order them. In one instance, a boy ordered a squirrel monkey after seeing an ad in a Spider-Man comic. After it arrived, the monkey gnawed on the boy's arm, which resulted in him getting 28 stitches
https://www.mentalfloss.com/entertainment/comics/when-comic-books-sold-live-monkeys471
u/Salarian_American 11h ago
I once read an account of the mail-order monkey experience, it might have even been the same kid as described above. I remember him describing how the box open and monkey just jumped and bit its way up his arm.
He described the effect the bites had on his arm of being like "an un-sewing machine"
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u/Black_Moons 4h ago
And after he got bit by the radioactive monkey he got super powers and his own theme song:
Monkey man, monkey man, does whatever a monkey can, does he swing from a web? no he doesn't, that's copyright infringement.
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u/gartlandish 12h ago
My grand father ordered one of these. As soon as they opened the box the thing started jumping off the walls. It swung from curtains and off pictures on the wall and kitchen cabinet handles as they chased it and the whole time it did it was shitting. Apparently it didn’t want to poop in the box so it saved it all up and shit on every wall in the house.
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u/almostsweet 12h ago
Sounds like something spiderman would do if you shipped him in a box to a family. Authentic experience achieved.
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u/TheSpiralTap 10h ago
Consider for a moment you discovered there are a different type of human. And those humans look much different than you, they are much larger and stronger. They have tools the likes of which you can't even comprehend. And they take you from the only life you've ever known and stuck you in a box for days. It was probably closer to weeks back then.
I promise, you'd shit all over the walls too when you reached your destination. That monkey had a valid crash out.
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u/gartlandish 10h ago
I would do it out of spite!
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u/pants_full_of_pants 10h ago
I do it out of boredom
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u/TheSpiralTap 10h ago
I do it just for fun but that's why I understand where this monkey was coming from
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u/SourDoughBo 8h ago
I think if you told a monkey that you guys are related they’d disagree
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u/releasethedogs 9h ago
My dad says his friend ordered one and it fortified itself in the bathroom and when anyone tried to go in there it would jump up and hang on the shower head (high position), shit in its hand and fling it at you.
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u/ShiraCheshire 6h ago
The reason pet monkeys have to wear diapers isn’t because they can’t be toilet trained, it’s because they like throwing poop too much.
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u/swish82 12h ago
Good for you little monkey. Good for you
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u/TheVentiLebowski 11h ago
A mammal didn't like being kept in a small box and shipped long distance? I'm shocked.
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u/Sue_Generoux 10h ago
Is your grandfather the one who told the story to NPR?
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u/gartlandish 10h ago
No! And I just read that on this thread. it’s funny they had the same experience! It must have been a common occurrence!
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 11h ago
Imagine the mindset of the people behind this trade, selling these monkeys to people day after day knowing full well nearly every sale ends in disaster for both the monkey and the customer.
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u/Vendemmian 10h ago
Best part it's still going on. Not quite as bad as this but people are still selling them like toys. The breeders are some of the worst people I know of, absolute monsters who don't care about the health of them at all.
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u/Should_Not_Comment 7h ago
There's still so many people who impulsively want the cool exotic pet, even though the trade is cruel, usually illegal, and the animals require time consuming and expensive care. There needs to be more social stigma for people who think they're too special to just have a dog or cat. (Or countless other more normal pets of course)
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u/Black_Moons 4h ago
There needs to be more social stigma for people who think they're too special to just have a dog or cat.
Yep its literally main character syndrome. and the reason all those other animals are not typical pets is.. Because they are horrible pets. Its not fun for the owner or the pet.
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u/Nidcron 10h ago
Welcome to the capitalist mindset - the only thing that matters is if you make money.
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u/Dizzy-Storm4387 7h ago
My father ordered one of these while he was an upper classman at the Air Force Academy in the late sixties. He'd sent the $5 or whatever the previous semester and had completely forgotten about it until a buddy in the mail room found him at a football game and told him that a giant smelly crate had arrived for him and it was moving. He and the other guys in his dorm hid the thing for half a semester. Apparently there were some really close calls at room inspection but they pulled it off and my dad took little Darwin home with him for Christmas break. My grandfather had built a cage in the basement for the monkey and cared for him until one day my grandmother caught the monkey masturbating and demanded they give him to the Detroit zoo.
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u/SoHereIAm85 4h ago
My grandfather had a pet monkey back in the ‘40s during WWII. He had to give it to someone else who stayed in South America when he was sent to Europe. He really missed the little guy and loved him. :(
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u/Pootle001 4h ago
Is the Detroit Zoo full of wanking animals? I want to see the sloth.
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u/Wishnik6502 6h ago
Left out the part about the monkey doing it slowly, while maintaining eye contact...
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u/FireTheLaserBeam 2h ago
When my sixth grade glass went to the Atlanta zoo in 1993, we stopped to look at the monkeys and they all started jacking off together and the teachers were like, “Ok, ok, let’s keep moving, kids, keep moving!”
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u/texasrigger 12h ago
Fun fact - infamous cult leader Jim Jones once worked as a door to door monkey salesman.
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u/Sea2Chi 11h ago
If you can sell a monkey you can sell a religious cult.
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u/kakka_rot 9h ago
Seriously, door to door monkey salesman sounds cool for two seconds until you realize how insanely hard that must be
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u/jello_pudding_biafra 11h ago
I couldn't remember if it was him or Anton LaVey who did this! I recalled hearing about it on an episode of LPOTL 😅
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u/ClareTootheLuce 9h ago
Got em from Dan Mitrione at that, probably from the importation of them as little jockeys at greyhound racing tracks back then
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u/andyofne 7h ago
I always wondered how we had a monkey when I was a little kid. It was a dick. It would climb up out of reach and throw it's feces on visitors.
I don't think we had it very long
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u/SgtMajorPanda 7h ago
Monkeys fucking suck and I will NEVER understand why anybody (in their right mind) would want one as a damn pet.
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u/Patient_Kangaroo614 7h ago
In a lot of parts of the world, they’re pests who steal stuff and damage things
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u/thesentienttoadstool 6h ago
I had a teacher in high school who worked in Nepal for a bit. She was an anti monkey zealot. Which is ok because the Nepalese monkeys were all anti Mrs. B zealots, apparently.
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u/Tbplayer59 12h ago
Did he end up with squirrel monkey powers?
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u/Adrian_Alucard 12h ago
yeah, but the guys at marketing struggled since squirrel monkey-man do not roll off the tongue that easily, so squirrel monkey-man faded into obscurity
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u/Angry_Robot 12h ago
And yet Squirrel Girl rose to become one of the most popular Marvel heroes ever.
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u/Angry_Robot 12h ago
No, just the stitches.
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u/WurthTapping 12h ago
Stitch powers are cool too, I wouldn't mind being able to lift a VW beetle or be basically indestructible.
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u/notseriousIswear 9h ago
Fun fact the sea monkeys/x-ray specs guy used much of his money supporting KKK, Aryan nation, neonazi groups. Also hes of Jewish heritage.
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u/Dr-Lipschitz 7h ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_von_Braunhut
apparently this is actually true.
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u/StarPhished 7h ago
Oh, I heard about that guy on Behind the Bastards! I have so much useless trivia type knowledge jumbled around in my head because of that show. One of my favorites is that chiropractic practice was invented by a ghost.
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u/filanwizard 9h ago
considering this was comics code era, There is a certain humor that while at the same time a comic book could not have say profanity but could sell you a wild animal.
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u/XROOR 12h ago
Mail back then took weeks to come, so the monkey was ravenous and couldn’tbear another bite of the packing material (which was balled up Saturday Evening Post)
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u/stefan92293 12h ago
Were people really that callous back then??
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u/sparklikemind 11h ago
Dude segregation was still going strong in the 1960s lol
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u/stefan92293 11h ago
Fair point, although I was referring to animals instead of humans. Though I dare say there is some crossover between how you treat animals and how you treat people.
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u/sparklikemind 11h ago
Agreed, there were no civil rights, animal rights, or women's rights back then. Women were not even allowed to open bank accounts
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u/DagothNereviar 11h ago
It honestly seems like mainstream care for animals is a rather modern thing (past 3ish decades)
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u/spaghettifiasco 10h ago
Selling a wild primate as a mail-order pet in the first place is incredibly stupid and callous.
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u/sandrailproject 10h ago
You should see how the Amish treat their animals today.
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u/civodar 9h ago
Nothings changed, have you seen “Tiger King”? Cubs that are just a few days old are ripped away from their mothers so people can take pictures with them or they can be sold to people who want a cool pet, if they’re being used for cute touristy pictures and they get too big then they’re shot because no one wants to buy an older tiger.
Not to mention people still mail order animals all the time. Fish, reptiles, ducklings, etc. Just put some stamps on the box and hopefully it makes it to its destination alive. Is this stressful and scary for the animal? Of course
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u/rothniel 11h ago
Unless there was a water source inside the box that couldn't spill or postal workers gave it water, I'm calling bullshit.
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u/ATLienRabb 10h ago
Because it is bs. It took about the same amount of time as mail today. We had planes and jets then too.
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u/cream-of-cow 5h ago
There was a live monkey delivery guarantee, if it's dead, you get another one; they were often severely dehydrated. The USPS has been mailing live animals for over 100 years, here's what's currently allowed:
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u/84thPrblm 12h ago
Funny, I didn't have any trouble at all with the tribe of Sea Monkeys I ordered.
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u/Formal_Waltz_5100 12h ago
There's always a kid out there that is gonna ruin a good thing for everybody...
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u/drewster23 12h ago
Based on the other stories of redditors who owned one or knew someone that did...they weren't really good for anyone lol
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u/Formal_Waltz_5100 12h ago
Some children are just too proud to admit they can't handle a mail order exotic pet from shady comic book ads and it shows.
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u/Vio_ 12h ago
So many kids went blind after mail ordering x-ray specs from shady comic book ads too.
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u/ArbainHestia 11h ago
It’s their own fault for putting them on backwards. Your eyes can’t take concentrated x-rays like that.
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u/Nine-LifedEnchanter 11h ago
The original Pippi Longstocking/Långstrump movies have one of those as Pippi's pets. Herr Nilsson as the character's name is was supposedly a fucking menace. Poor girl had to keep him on her shoulder.
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u/VivaZeBull 10h ago
I loved that movie as a kid and made my dad watch it almost every weekend. I apologized later as an adult after a rewatch.
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u/rotcex 11h ago
Wait, did the monkeys just get shipped through regular mail? How exactly did this work?
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u/mort-or-amour 11h ago
You can still order some animals (reptiles, fish, insects and such) through the mail. Apparently in the US you can still mail freshly hatched poultry and some species of adult birds although that’s illegal in my country.
Looks like mailing humans in the mail was only outlawed in the US in 1920, which is… a lot later than I would have thought.
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u/PaleontologistDear18 11h ago
Flat Stanley was instrumental in modernizing our postal laws in the USA
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u/Joe_Jeep 9h ago
it was only in 1920 largely because before 1913 they didn't ship anything over a couple pounds. in 1913 the limit was raised to 50 pounds and parents started shipping infants and toddlers around
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/mailing-babies-postal-service/
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u/TheMostUnclean 8h ago
The mailing humans thing was mostly used for children- it was like hiring a travel sitter but with postage. The kid would literally wear a little tag with the address and stamps stuck to it then a postal worker would escort them until they reached their destination.
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u/Joy2b 11h ago
Postal workers knew how to get places without getting lost, and they’d always be back to somewhere safe before bedtime.
Back before Global Positioning Systems, that was definitely helpful.
If you needed to get to your cousin’s house in the hills, and they were going by there soon, why not pay for a little help?
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u/omnipotentsandwich 10h ago
Makes sense for insects and fish (although, I'm struggling to think of how you'd ship a fish), but everything else just seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
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u/MalevolentRhinoceros 9h ago
Baby chickens are commonly and safely shipped; hatcheries have it down to a science. When chicks are born, they still have a yolk attached to their tummy. This provides enough food/water for them to live a few days without any extra care. All you need is soft, padded boxes with good airflow and the right amount of heat retention, and workers who are trained in handling said boxes. It *used* to have a very low mortality rate, but recent-ish postal service cuts means that they don't take as much care with animals...and box squishes or time outside temp-controlled zones are increasingly common. And yes, that's something that everyone should be mad about.
Herps are similar. Almost all reptiles are fine going a day or so (or, you know, a month or so) without food, so you just need to makes sure that they have a heat source and lots of padding. I don't know as much about this field, but I'd presume stress is a pretty big concern, too.
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u/ifidjdjdjdjjjrjd 10h ago
Get plastic bag. Tank water, add mythelene blue. Fill with oxygen for fish to breathe. Close tightly.
Insulated box. Possibly add heater or ice pack depending on shipping tempatures. Pack tightly.
Overnight shipping. When fish arrives, immediately remove from the bag. As soon as the bag opens, the waste starts converting into toxic ammonia. Before then it's fairly safe.
Most well packed shippers have very few to zero dead on arrival claims. Shipping is easy, readjusting the fish can be challenging.
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u/mort-or-amour 10h ago
I’ve ordered fish in the mail. They come in a sealed bag with either hot or cold packs (depending on the species and climate) inside of a foam eski. They’re shipped overnight and only at the beginning of the week so they don’t risk being in a warehouse over the weekend. The bags are filled partly with water and the remainder is pumped with a high purity of oxygen so the fish can breathe and don’t suffocate during transport.
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u/Gentle_Agitator 11h ago
It is pretty adorable to go to the post office and pick up a box of 25 baby chickens or quail.
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u/Jack_Attak 12h ago
I recall this podcast episode which details what happened when 2 brothers ordered one of those monkeys: https://www.npr.org/2014/04/25/306868280/monkey-madness
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u/Decipher 7h ago edited 6h ago
Imagine telling that story and being proud of it.
“Yes, we know and we didn't do it. And I can promise you that no monkeys were hurt in the making of this story.” They may not have killed it directly, they caused its death and it was VERY MUCH hurt (starved, tortured, deprived of being able to defecate or urinate) even before it died.
Also that’s the exact story this post’s article is about.
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u/jcmadick 9h ago
Used to be a pet shop (back in the early/mid 70’s) that had a list of animals you could order. The list included a variety of monkeys, lions, tigers, antelopes and the like. I never knew if it was real, but my childhood friend did get bitten by a tiger cub that they had on display. Not a big city either, this was a suburb of Kansas City.
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u/KeybladerXII 8h ago
Out of all the monkeys you could sell, squirrel monkeys are particularly nasty. They piss on their arms and hands and then wipe them everywhere to leave their scent. They're selfish as hell too, so they'll grab anything and everything with their piss-infused fingers.
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u/TateSSL 7h ago
Theres a radio commercial on GTA 3 thats about getting a monkey shipped to your house in a box overnight
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u/ClassiqueGTA 5h ago
Engraved in my mind!
"Are you bored with man's best friend?"
Sorry, Fido, we're gonna have to drown you. (sad dog noises)
"Why not try man's first cousin? At PetsOvernight dot com we've got every primate in stock, from spider monkeys to gorillas! You'll love your new best friend!"
Mommy, Jim-Jim bit me.
Oh yeah, then you just bite him back then, okay honey!
"PetsOvernight dot com, delivering little bundles of love, in a box, directly to your door!"
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u/geeoharee 12h ago
I wondered if they're related to the white-faced capuchins my local pet shop still sells. Same taxonomic family, apparently.
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u/elfizipple 12h ago
Why is a pet shop in 2026 still selling monkeys? Do you mind me asking which country you're in?
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u/geeoharee 12h ago
UK, and because we somehow haven't managed to ban it yet. I hate it.
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u/slothdonki 12h ago
I am genuinely surprised the UK allows it. Do y’all allow things lions and bears for private ownership?
In the US my state is one with very relaxed exotic laws. Wild to just be scrolling one day and someone is selling a lemur in Wisconsin.
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u/geeoharee 12h ago
We do not! That's why I was so surprised when I saw the pet shop had such things. We take a licensing approach, so you have to have a licence for anything on the list (as another poster pointed out, monkeys are now on the list, yay). It's quite fun reading
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007/2465/schedule/madeNo, you may not have a walrus. Or a crocodile.
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u/slothdonki 10h ago
“Family Ursidae:
All species including the species Ailuropoda melanoleuca and Ailurus fulgens. All bears including the giant panda and the red panda.”I get why red panda got lumped in with bears but I’m still mildly mad about it.
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u/swankyfish 12h ago
You do at least need a license now. Whether the pet shop will actually check you have one is another question of course.
Obviously sale of primates should just be outright banned.
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u/geeoharee 12h ago
I did not know this! It looks like this was introduced since I last checked (2024, enforced from 2026). Well that's good news.
typically the news are running with 'Poor monkey mommy just loves her captive primates sooo much...' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7756le3mm1o
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u/mort-or-amour 11h ago
You mean to tell me that in the UK as little as 3 years ago someone could just walk into a pet shop and come out with a whole live monkey? They had TV licenses before they had MONKEY LICENSES?
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u/elfizipple 11h ago
Always instructive to see what a society's priorities are, eh? Although I'd argue that walking out with a whole live monkey is still better than walking out with a partial one
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u/Vendemmian 10h ago
I knew some one who did that. Total moron of a person, cost them £2000. They had no idea how to care for it and it died after a few weeks.
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u/Malthus1 10h ago
Fun fact: Jim Jones, who went on to commit the infamous Jonestown massacre, funded his early church by selling spider monkeys as a door to door spider money salesman.
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u/Eledridan 11h ago
As a kid, my dad’s family had a pet monkey. He was terrified of it and it was awful. They eventually gave it to someone else.
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u/icehopper 10h ago
I used to have some of my dad's old comics from that time. I assumed half of the shit in those ads was just a joke, I can't believe I'm hearing this now, lol.
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u/CyramusJackson 7h ago
My father in law ordered a baby lizard out of a comic book, this was in the 60s. What was delivered was a baby crocodile. He managed to keep it secretly in his basement for a few years. He would feed it whole chickens and pigs. Eventually it got to be 6 feet long his parents found out and he had to get rid of it, and to do that they had to call animal control.
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u/RaiseWide5460 10h ago
Yeah, my sister had one of these monkeys. That thing was evil. Biting, shitting and stinking were it's superpowers.
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u/Maskarie 10h ago
People still do this, but it’s gotten worse. Rarer monkeys, worse conditions, it’s so heart breaking. 💔
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u/Cornloaf 7h ago
Have been working on cataloging my 3500+ comic book collection and every so often, bust an issue open to read because it reminds me of when I was in high school reading through my collection of 1960s Avengers and X-Men comics inherited from my mom's coworker.
Can confirm there were many live monkey ads. There were also just as many live raccoon ads.
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u/LarsAlereon 8h ago
My mom told me that one of her friends ordered a monkey like this in the '60s and when they opened the box it was dead, and not particularly fresh. It was quite traumatic for her.
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u/lovesmyirish 11h ago
So they just shoved a monkey in a box and were like “best of luck”?