Friday, June 16, 2006

Monkey shrinks

A zoo in Belarus has opened a "psychological relief room" where stressed people can share their woes with a family of monkeys. The family of cynomolgus (long-tailed) monkeys, has been helping people fight stress at a special “psychological relief room” in a Belarus zoo for several years. Citizens of Vitebsk come and share their troubles and triumphs with the primates.

People come to the monkeys for support, zoo director Zhanetta Kochenovskaya told Interfax. “Anyone can come into the room where the monkey family lives and tell them of their troubles and problems. You can whine, tell your secrets and even cry out loud.”

According to the director, the monkeys’ most frequent “patients” are 40-45 year old men going through the so-called middle-age crisis, as well as young girls. Even stressed office workers seek consolation in the monkeys’ cage. “We’ve had troubled civil servants come to see their distant ancestors for psychological support and stress relief. And communicating with the monkeys helped them,” Kochenovskaya added.

3 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

this maybe the most stupid thing i have ever heard of...and im going to go tell my birds all about it

Anonymous said...

I'd just love to be able to tell my husband- "Save it, go tell it to the monkey!". :)

dom said...

We don't have monkeys to hand in Sheffield ,so I spent all morning telling my woes to a dead sheep up on the moor, well it was dead when I left, I never knew sheep could hang themselves.
I'm not sure how to take that Debbie , lol