Skotty is a black-hooded capuchin monkey who prosecutors said was abused and given amphetamines by the Westwood man who owned him.
When authorities seized Skotty, then about six months old, in February 2022, he was so underweight that a lawyer described the animal as “a Holocaust survivor.”
He was lethargic and lacked the coordination to pick food from a plate and put it in his mouth.
Skotty on the day he was grabbed from his owner’s apartment in Westwood in February 2022.
Now, almost three years later, Skotty – who still has his baby teeth – lives in a sanctuary in Florida, surrounded by capuchins and other monkeys.
He’s the right weight. He can run and climb. He has a good bond with a female monkey of about the same age, named Harriet Houdini.
“She’s become just like his sister,” said Kari Bagnall, who runs Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary, a sanctuary in Gainesville, Florida that was home to 191 monkeys at the end of November.
“She and Skotty play and play and play,” Bagnall said.
Skotty, a capuchin monkey, lives in a shelter in Gainesville, Florida.
This outcome was not necessarily guaranteed when Skotty arrived at Bagnall’s sanctuary in March 2022.
Westwood to Indiana to Florida
After being taken from the Westwood man, Skotty (then known as Neo) was housed at the Peaceable Primate Sanctuary in Winamac, Indiana, where he underwent what prosecutors described as “rehabilitation.” The man who owned him eventually pleaded guilty to an animal cruelty charge.
Ultimately, Bagnall offered to let the monkey live in her facility permanently. She picked up Skotty in Chattanooga, Tennessee – an employee at the Indiana branch met her there – and drove back to Gainesville.
Her facility has been operational since the late 1990s.
About half of the monkeys living there are rescued pets, she said. The other half includes former laboratory monkeys used for malaria research, drug addiction research and vocal cord and gastrointestinal research.
Bagnall said Skotty, still a baby, was small when he arrived. They introduced him to two female monkeys, but his legs didn’t work properly – apparently because he had been medicated – and he couldn’t cling to either of them.
The shelter staff bottle-fed him. About a dozen staff members, including Bagnall, took turns sleeping with him and feeding him every four hours.
Having several people caring for him, Bagnall said, kept him from becoming attached to any one person.
A capuchin monkey seized from a Westwood man’s apartment in 2022 is now thriving in a Florida facility, prosecutors say. Skotty, whose name was Neo when he was captured, tested positive for amphetamines and was severely malnourished, prosecutors said, when animal control officers removed him from the apartment.
“We wanted him to be a monkey,” she said. “We didn’t want to make him human.”
It worked, she said.
In addition to his sisterly relationship with Harriet Houdini, Skotty has bonded with a monkey in his early thirties named Kooda.
‘Just a little boy’
Kooda has become like a mother to both Skotty and Harriet Houdini, Bagnall said, as she cared for both. They all sleep together in an indoor enclosure. They spend their days – unless it is too cold or when it storms – in an enclosed outdoor enclosure with trees and branches that they can climb.
When he first arrived, Skotty could only hop around, but now runs “like a maniac” and does somersaults.
“Now you wouldn’t know there was ever anything wrong with him,” she said.
“He’s just a little boy,” she added. “Just a character. He wants all the attention.”
Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Gainesville, Florida encourages sponsorship of individual monkeys. For more information, visit: junglefriends.org and click on “How You Can Help.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How an amphetamine-fed monkey went from Westwood to Florida sanctuary
