Photographer Jo-Anne McArthur and filmmaker Karol Orzechowski went undercover in Southeast Asia to find out. They documented the lives of wild-caught and captive-bred macaques at farms across Laos for the film Maximum Tolerated Dose. The photos and video were also used in a campaign by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and were presented at the Geneva CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Conference in 2012, proof that the animals were kept in squalid conditions and that animal protection laws needed to be upheld and increased.
Shortly after this investigation was brought to public attention, the farm where this monkey was kept closed down. This macaque was one among hundreds who lived—barely lived—in filthy, cramped conditions.
