DR ANDIE ANG, 37, RESEARCH SCIENTIST, MANDAI NATURE, AND PRESIDENT OF JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE (SINGAPORE)
Dr Andie Ang still has fond memories of her small vervet monkey called Ah Boy, that was given to her by relatives when she was 10 years old. Its fur was golden brown and underneath that, it had blue skin. At that time, nobody told her that it was illegal to keep a pet monkey, though the young girl was savvy enough to wonder if it was humane to do so.
“I would usually come home from school to see it all by itself, chained under my sink. I thought, isn’t it sad that the monkey doesn’t have its freedom? So I decided to give it away to a rehab sanctuary in Zambia – it was the right thing to do,” she reminisces.
Ah Boy was the reason that Dr Andie got into primatology, as she wanted to learn more about the threats monkeys faced in the illegal wildlife trade and protect them. So despite her parents’ concerns about her career prospects in wildlife conservation, she doggedly pursued her doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder.
She now specialises in studying the Raffles’ banded langur – a critically endangered species, with only 70 found in Singapore and fewer than 300 left globally. She also wants to try and change people’s negative mindset about monkeys in general, even though it’s difficult.
“The biggest misconception is that monkeys are naughty, aggressive and
