December 14 - International Monkey Day

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International Monkey Day (Monkey Day) stands apart from all the holidays dedicated to representatives of the animal world. This is due not only to the peculiarities of the primates themselves, but also to the way in which the unusual date appeared in the ecological calendar. This happened in 2000, when one of the students of the University of Michigan, for fun, marked the date of December 14 on his calendar as Monkey Day. Student friends supported the joke and cheerfully celebrated the holiday. Little of! Its celebration has grown into a tradition for the student community, which spread initially throughout the United States, and thanks to the Internet and in other countries of the world.

Today's holiday does not have official international status and is not a state or national holiday of any country. However, its humorous connotation of the celebration, when participants in the events dressed in monkey costumes and imitated them, gradually takes on new features and forms. This happened, first of all, thanks to zoologists and zoo workers who began to coincide with the International Day of Monkeys a certain holiday program, combining the cognitive aspect along with the humorous one.

Today, many zoos in the world participate in the celebration of primates. Advocates of animals saw in the International Day of Monkeys an opportunity to pay attention to the problems that these representatives of the animal world have to face. Visitors to zoos, among which children are indispensable participants, can get acquainted with the variety of primates, their habits, characteristics of development, nutrition, and natural habitat.

On this day, children and adults are given the opportunity to feed the monkeys, recall art and animated films, books in which primates were shot or became the main characters. On Monkey Day, everyone can buy clothes or souvenirs with the image of these wonderful animals.

It is possible that soon Monkey Day will become even more popular and even gain official status, thanks to the initiative of one of the international environmental organizations.

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