Primate Passion

Primatologist Andie Ang shares with Grace Ma her passion to protect and foster greater understanding of local endangered primates

- Grace Ma

IT MAY SOUND IRONIC, BUT Andie Ang’s interest in primates was piqued after she received a juvenile wild vervet monkey as a gift. It was illegally taken from Zambia by sailor friends of her relatives, who gifted it to her. She reminisces, “I was only 10 years old and did not fully grasp the difference between a wild animal and a domestic pet. So I raised the monkey like I would a pet dog until I learned, through watching him every day, that he was miserable chained up at home.”

The monkey was eventually repatriated back to Africa but the close-up experience sparked a passion in Andie to study primates, beginning with a stint at the Singapore Zoo, and later at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand observing white-handed gibbons. She enjoyed it so much that she continued her research in the different forests of Asia, and eventually pursued a doctorate project on leaf-eating monkeys in Vietnam.