Welcome and thank you for visiting
Jungle Friends' web site!

About Jungle Friends

Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, located on 12 acres in Gainesville, Florida. Jungle Friends is accredited by the American Sanctuary Association and The Association of Sanctuaries. We rescue and offer a permanent, safe haven for monkeys from around the United States who have been abused, confiscated by authorities, retired from research, or who are ex-pets.

At this time, Jungle Friends is the sanctuary home for 101 monkeys and we have an ever-growing waiting list.

Jungle Friends discourages the keeping of primates as ‘pets’ and we hope the practice of stealing baby monkeys from their natural mothers will end. Baby monkeys are literally pulled from their protective mothers, sometimes when they are only three days old, to be sold as ‘pets’. It is not hard to imagine the horror both baby and mother monkey must feel during this traumatic and forced separation. Sadly, it can take a lifetime for the grief-stricken mother to come out of a depression brought on by this thievery and there are always scars left on mother and baby from such cruelty.

What We Do

Jungle Friends works toward creating a better life for the unfortunate primates who find themselves hapless victims in a captive situation. We work in unison and cooperatively with other credible animal sanctuaries, primate associations and animal protection organizations.

The demand for housing abandoned/discarded animals plagues all animal rescue organizations. Sanctuaries for primates, however, confront some unique challenges for meeting the demand to re-home abandoned/discarded primates. Primates are wild and exotic animals; as such they are not appropriate (if even legal) as ‘pets’. These magnificent beings cannot be adopted out to individuals; nor can they be rehabilitated and released "back into the wild" because monkeys are not native to North America. [If you’d like to know where wild/exotic animals in the United States come from, please click here.]

Though Jungle Friends specializes in New World primates, we are always available to help any primates in captivity in any way possible, from giving a monkey a permanent home at Jungle Friends to working with their caregivers to find safe, healthy and stimulating environments for the monkeys in their care.

Jungle Friends' ability to do this charitable work and provide a safe haven for our resident monkeys, as well as doing educational outreach and assisting with the rescuing for any monkeys in crisis situations, depends solely upon donations.

A donation to Jungle Friends goes directly to help the monkeys. Donations not only provide all that is necessary to give a wonderful, enriched sanctuary home to our resident monkeys, but donations also enable us to help many other monkeys through our outreach. For the Jungle Friends’ residents, we are committed to ensure that the monkeys receive all that they need to be happy and healthy in every way - socially, psychologically and physically.

Education/Outreach

Jungle Friends offers a compelling ‘Born to be Wild’ Power Point Presentation. We speak to our audiences on the plight of primates in captivity and teach them to understand that wild/exotic animals are not meant to be kept as ‘pets’, but we should rather “Keep them in our hearts, not in our homes”. It is more critical now than ever that our future generation grow up with a strongly developed compassion ethic.

We hope that you enjoy visiting and find our site informative. Please check back often for news and updates. If you cannot find the information you are looking for, please feel free to contact us. We are always happy to help.

Ethics are complete, profound, and alive only when addressed to all living beings. Only then are we in spiritual connection with the world. Any philosophy not respecting this, not based on the indefinite totality of life, is bound to disappear.

~Albert Schweitzer