Macaques as Members of a Human Family: Novel and Undocumented Behavioral Insights into Human-Macaque Bonds and the Case of Kaka, Mit, and Puka as Victims of Selective Legal Enforcement Rooted in Generalized Prejudices

Macaques, commonly classified as wild animals, are often excluded from consideration as companion animals due to prevailing prejudices and institutional frameworks. However, newly emerging observations reveal that some individuals have formed deep, reciprocal emotional bonds with macaques, integrating them, not merely as pets, but as genuine members of the family. This lifestyle appears to bring greater psychological, intellectual and social fulfillment for the macaques, surpassing the well-being of their wild and captive counterparts, thus contributing to the emergence or more evolved profiles. These cases challenge the dominant long-standing paradigm that macaques “cannot be pets” or “belong only in the wild”, and other prejudices, rooted in earlier observations of captive macaques suffering neglect, abuse, and psychological distress, observations which have shaped current legal and ethical assumptions. They highlight a quiet revolution in human-primate relationships, rooted in mutual understanding and fulfillment, deep emotional reciprocity, and enrichment, and argue for distinguishing macaques integrated into families from the conventional notion of “captivity” which fails to reflect their lived experience.Despite growing evidence of healthy, enriched, and mutually fulfilling human-primate relationships, many regulatory bodies, continue to operate under outdated non-inclusive convictions, instead of exhibiting scientific curiosity and ethical reflection. As a result, they would intervene, using rigid interpretations of wildlife law to confiscate well-cared-for macaques, sometimes selectively and without conducting any behavioral or welfare assessments, disrupting the lives of well-adjusted macaques and causing trauma, regression, and even fatal outcomes, to which they nonetheless remain indifferent and unaccountable. This paper examines the ethical and scientific shortcomings of rigid legal applications and critiques how institutional bias and the unchecked enforcement, particularly through the story of the monkeys Kaka, Mit and Puka, can become a mechanism of harm in the name of conservation and in the name of the law, no longer serving an intent to protect, but an intent to punish, deriving the law from its original purpose. This is especially problematic when authority is delegated to NGOs or agencies driven by personal or political agendas rather than genuine concern for animal welfare. It highlights the urgent need to distinguish between signs of fulfillment and distress, and advocates for policy reform that incorporates these behavioral indicators into law enforcement procedures, as the consequences of confiscation differ dramatically between abused and emotionally bonded, well-cared-for macaques.Ultimately, this review not only challenges assumptions about macaques in human families, but calls for making ethics a legal duty to protect animals from being victimized by punitive or corrupt enforcement practices; It argues for a more nuanced, case-by-case approach, individualized welfare assessments rooted in international animal welfare principles that prioritize emotional bonds and quality of life over rigid legal classification, by integrating behavioral science and ethical analysis into legal processes to uphold the original protective intent of the law over political interests or vengeful action; And it encourages transparency and the recognition that not all human-primate relationships are harmful, some are profoundly beneficial to the animals.