International Primate Day: Malta Must Stop Treating Primates as Pets

International Primate Day, observed every year on 1 September, should not pass unnoticed in Malta.

Across the world, primates are threatened by habitat destruction, hunting, trafficking, the exotic-pet trade, entertainment and their continued use in scientific research.

Here in Malta, the day should also force us to confront an uncomfortable question:

• How did such a small country end up with so many primates living in captivity?

Figures published following Malta’s dangerous-animal registration amnesty revealed that 96 animals had been registered, including 29 monkeys and 10 chimpanzees.

That means ten chimpanzees were registered in a country with a population of little more than half a million people. Malta is the smallest member state of the European Union. Even without claiming that this represents a complete or current census, the number is alarming and completely disproportionate to the size of our country.

These are not ten ordinary “pets”. They are ten highly intelligent, powerful and intensely social great apes whose needs cannot be met in a cage, a private residence, on a rooftop or in somebody’s backyard.

Primates Are Not Pets

Primates may appear cute, affectionate and manageable when they are young. That image is frequently promoted through social media, where baby monkeys are dressed in clothes, fed from bottles and treated like human infants.

Primates are wild animals. They have not undergone the thousands of years of domestication that shaped animals such as dogs. As they mature, they become stronger, more territorial and more difficult to control. Their natural behaviour can include biting, scratching, displaying aggression and challenging others within their social hierarchy.

Chimpanzees are particularly powerful animals. Their intelligence does not make them easier to keep, it makes the harm caused by an inadequate environment even greater.

In the wild, primates live in complex social groups. They develop long-lasting relationships, communicate in sophisticated ways, travel, forage, climb, play, solve problems and learn from other members of their group. A human owner, however well-intentioned, cannot replace an appropriate primate community or replicate the physical and mental stimulation of their natural environment.

When deprived of these needs, captive primates may develop serious behavioural and psychological problems. These can include repetitive movements, pacing, rocking, self-harm, aggression, withdrawal and other abnormal behaviours associated with chronic stress.

Keeping a primate alive is not the same as providing that primate with an acceptable life.

There are also serious public-health and safety concerns. Primates can carry diseases transmissible to humans, while humans can also transmit illnesses to them. Their strength, unpredictability under stress and ability to manipulate locks and enclosures create risks not only for their keepers but also for neighbours and members of the public.

Malta Has Already Been Given Several Warnings

Escaped primates are not a hypothetical concern in Malta.

In 2016, a marmoset taken to a primary school in Żabbar escaped during an animal-blessing activity. In 2018, a vervet monkey escaped from its enclosure in Iklin and travelled several kilometres before being found at a hotel in St Julian’s. In 2021, another pet monkey was reported missing in Attard.

Then, in June 2024, footage emerged of a chimpanzee sitting on a wall and moving through trees in Żabbar. At the time, it was not publicly established where the chimpanzee had come from or whether it had escaped.

The previous Commissioner for Animal Welfare Alison Bezzina also highlighted a critical problem: even when authorities locate such animals, Malta has no suitable sanctuary in which to place them.

More recent reports of monkeys outside their enclosures continue to raise the same questions:

• Who owns these animals?

• Are all of them legally registered and individually identified?

• Where did they originate?

• Are their enclosures regularly inspected?

• Are breeding and transfers being monitored?

• What happens when one escapes or must be confiscated?

• Where is Malta’s emergency and long-term contingency plan?

  
  

Every escape is more than a curious social-media video. It is evidence of a system that has failed to prevent unsuitable animals from being kept, failed to guarantee secure conditions and failed to establish somewhere appropriate for confiscated primates to go.

Registration Does Not Make Captivity Acceptable

Malta prohibited the importation and private keeping of dangerous animals in 2016, except in licensed zoological establishments. Amnesty periods were intended to identify animals that were already in the country and bring previously unregistered keepers under regulatory control.

Registering a chimpanzee does not prove that its social, behavioural, veterinary and environmental needs are being met. Nor should registration allow breeding, transfers or the continuation of private collections for generations.

The authorities must establish the current status and location of every registered primate, verify whether the animals are still alive, investigate any births or transfers and ensure that no new animals have entered the country illegally.

All primates should be individually identified, regularly inspected by suitably qualified professionals and subject to enforceable species-specific welfare standards. Where their conditions are unacceptable, Malta must work with reputable international primate sanctuaries to find appropriate solutions.

Malta Needs a Proper Positive List

This situation strengthens the case for a comprehensive Positive List.

A Positive List identifies the limited species that may legally be kept as companion animals after objective scientific assessment. Factors should include whether the animal’s welfare needs can realistically be met in a domestic environment, the risks to public health and safety, the possibility of the species becoming invasive and the potential impact of trade on wild populations.

If a species is not on the list, it cannot be imported, bred, sold or kept privately.

This is clearer and more enforceable than attempting to maintain an endless list of prohibited species. It also places the burden of proof where it belongs: a wild animal should not be available for private ownership simply because the authorities have not yet prohibited it by name.

Malta already has a form of Positive List regulating animals that may be offered for sale through pet shops. However, research into European Positive List systems has highlighted that Malta’s model applies only to the pet-shop trade. That is not enough.

Malta needs legislation covering ownership, importation, private transfers, online sales, breeding and possession, with no loopholes allowing animals to move through private dealers or informal transactions.

Primates must never appear on a list of animals considered suitable for private domestic ownership.

Primates Are Still Used in Laboratories

International Primate Day was established partly to draw attention to primates used in experimentation and this suffering has not ended.

Thousands of non-human primates are still used in European research and testing. Most are macaques and marmosets rather than chimpanzees, and they may be used in neuroscience, infectious-disease research, pharmaceutical development and safety testing.

The EU’s ban on animal testing for cosmetics does not mean that animal experimentation has ended. Animals continue to be used in other areas of research and regulatory testing.

EU legislation places particularly strict restrictions on the use of great apes and requires researchers to apply the principles of the 3Rs: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement.

Yet the long-term goal must be more ambitious than reducing suffering within laboratories. Investment must continue moving towards replacing animal experiments with human-relevant methods, including organoids, organs-on-chips, advanced cell cultures and computer-based models.

The fact that primates are biologically and cognitively similar to us is often used to justify experimenting on them. Ethically, that same similarity should make us question the suffering we impose on them even more urgently.

Primates are not status symbols. They are not entertainment, social-media props or unusual additions to a private collection.

They are intelligent, social wild animals whose lives cannot be reduced to permanent confinement behind bars.

Malta must ensure that the primates already here are protected and that no more are brought here to suffer the same fate.