Why We Haven't Domesticated Monkeys

For thousands of years, humans have captured and then bred traits into wild animals that make them useful to us, a process called domestication. Cats and dogs live with us as pets, horses do all kinds of useful work, and livestock became manageable enough for us to eat. Monkeys, on the other hand, are very difficult to domesticate. MinuteEarth goes through the domestication process, and explains why monkeys are so difficult to make into pets -although it has been done here and there. While they lay out the nuts and bolts of how attempts to domesticate monkeys continue to fail, it appears that it comes down to monkeys being very much like humans. They are smart, and they don't want to be domesticated. It shouldn't be that hard for humans to understand. After all, we don't want to be domesticated by another species either, do we? (via Geeks are Sexy)