+
upworthy
Joy

Police receive a prank 911 call. The suspect? An adorable baby monkey.

Monkey business at its finest.

monkey prank 911 call, 911 call monkey, monkey calls 911
Photo by Tj Kolesnik on Unsplash

No monkeys were harmed in the making of this story. But one is in a timeout.

Prank calls are a popular way to monkey around, but this story takes it to a whole new level.

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call that was immediately disconnected. According to a social media post, dispatchers traced the mysterious call back to the offices of a local zoo nearby. However no one at the zoo made the call.

Make that no person.

Deputies soon realized the lawbreaker behind the call was Route—a baby capuchin with two opposable thumbs and quite possibly a mark on her permanent record.


“Capuchin monkeys are so smart,” Paso Robles' Zoo To You owner Lisa Jackson told AP News, noting that capuchins are tool enthusiasts.



“She sees me all the time texting and playing with the phone. So I think that's pretty much what she did.”

You heard it folks—this was a textbook case of monkey see, monkey do.

Baby Route had picked up a cellphone found from inside a golf cart that traveled around the zoo’s 40 acres and started pushing buttons. That button combo just so happened to be for emergencies only. Whoops.

“Our Deputies have seen their fair share of ‘monkey business’ in the County. But nothing quite like this,” the Sheriff’s office wrote.

They also posted adorable photos of the guilty party.

Route’s antics are certainly hilarious and rival that of “Curious George,” but they also prove why trying to own a capuchin (or any monkey, for that matter) isn’t the best idea.

According to The Spruce Pets, capuchins rarely get enough stimulation and activity when raised by humans, leading to destructive behavior.

Plus it can be nearly impossible to mimic a natural environment and diet. Do you really have the time and resources to make your own mini jungle and serve mixed fruits and vegetables mixed with baby food … twice a day?

Oh yeah, and it’s illegal to own one in 35 out of 50 states. So there’s that.

Basically, even though movies and television shows make owning a monkey seem like a dream … maybe reconsider.

monkeys for pets

don't trust everything you see on the telly

Giphy

As Zoo to You wrote on its Facebook page, “let this serve as an educational lesson that monkeys are NOT animals that should be kept as pets! They're so inquisitive you never know what might happen!”

Still, we can admire these super-smart monkeys and their odd quirks from afar. For example, you know how we humans might try to form bonds through a well-meaning high five or fist bump? Capuchins prefer instead to poke each other’s eyeballs. How fun.

They also wash their hands and feet with pee, and scientists still aren’t sure exactly why. Comfort? Pleasure? A good tree grip? The world may never know.

Lastly, they very well may be nature’s radical feminists. Female capuchins have been known to throw rocks at their potential male mates.

One thing’s for sure—capuchins might be born for mischief, but it’s never less than highly entertaining.

And now for the real question: How will Route cause chaos next? Another fake 911 call? Will she accidentally order a delivery of 70 pizzas? Guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

Keep ReadingShow less

A guy passes out on his bed eating pizza.

A 29-year-old woman had a baby girl, and after a brief maternity leave, she had to return to work. She couldn't afford childcare, so her husband, 35, reluctantly agreed to watch the baby while she was at work.

“It’s important to know that he’s been unemployed since 2021,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s AITA subforum. “He receives benefits. It’s also important to know that he’s extremely lazy. He doesn’t cook, clean, or help out in any way. I was nervous about leaving her home with her father, but I had no choice.”

The mother had reason to be worried about leaving her baby home alone with her husband, but in the beginning, things seemed fine. “When I came back from work, she was clean and sleeping. The next few times I came home, he was either playing with her, feeding her, or out for a walk with her. I was happy,” she wrote.

Keep ReadingShow less

A boy doing the dishes.

A 41-year-old mom with 3 boys, 12-year-old twins, and a 10-year-old, pays them $10 daily to do their chores. However, their pay is deducted $10 if they miss a day. The boys have to do their tasks 5 days a week, although it doesn’t matter which days they choose to work.

“This system has worked swimmingly for us since it started, the boys have always complied with completing their chores,” the mom wrote on Reddit.

Her 12-year-old son was getting ready to play Fortnite with a friend and told him he’d be ready in 15 minutes once he finished his chores. When the boys started playing the game, he told the friend he was in charge of dusting and sweeping the stairs, to which the friend responded, “It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.”

After learning what the friend said, the mom told her son that chores are genderless.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

Women do better when they have female friends.

Madeleine Albright once said, "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." It turns out that might actually be a hell on Earth, because women just do better when they have other women to rely on, and there's research that backs it up.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that women who have a strong circle of friends are more likely to get executive positions with higher pay. "Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of 1-3 women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination," Brian Uzzi writes in the Harvard Business Review.

Part of the reason why women with strong women backing them up are more successful is because they can turn to their tribe for advice. Women have to face different challenges than men, such as unconscious bias, and being able to turn to other women who have had similar experiences can help you navigate a difficult situation. It's like having a road map for your goals.

Keep ReadingShow less

Derrick Downey Jr. has been dubbed the 'squirrel whisperer.'

Most of us who live in the U.S. are used to looking out a window or walking out our front door and seeing squirrels. The cute, fluffy-tailed rodents often appear perfectly pettable, but they generally scamper away when humans get too close.

That is not the case for TikTok creator Derrick Downey Jr., however, as he has not only befriended his neighborhood squirrels but goes all out to help them live their best squirrel lives.

Downey shared a video in May of 2022 in which he chats with a couple of squirrels on his porch while feeding them and offering them water. That video received over 26 million views and kicked off a whole series of videos showcasing the adorable antics of Richard, Maxine, Hector, Consuela, Norma (may she rest in peace), and Hood Rat Raymond. He's built Richard a house, rescued Maxine's babies, mourned Norma's transition (to wherever squirrels go when they die) and more.

People can't get enough, and who can blame them? Squirrels are the best (when they're not tearing up your patio furniture and stealing cotton for their nest, as Downey has experienced.)

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Voice recordings of people who were enslaved offer incredible first-person accounts of U.S. history

"The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak." - Ted Koppel

Library of Congress

When we think about the era of American slavery, many of us tend to think of it as the far distant past. While slavery doesn't exist as a formal institution today, there are people living who knew formerly enslaved black Americans first-hand. In the wide arc of history, the legal enslavement of people on U.S. soil is a recent occurrence—so recent, in fact, that we have voice recordings of interviews with people who lived it.

Keep ReadingShow less