Why do I have empathy for every living thing but monkeys?

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I hate any kind of monkeys; chimps, gorillas, orangutans etc. I was watching videos on Youtube of chimps and the baby chimps just annoyed me and the adult chimps were ugly and annoying to look at. There's one video where a baby chimp gets an electric shock, and I just said "serves it right, stupid thing!" But if that was any other animal, I would have felt some sort of empathy for it.

I feel empathy for insects, animals, people, plants, anything that's alive. But monkeys I feel nothing.

No, I wouldn't want to see a monkey tortured or dead, I'm not that evil. But I still hate them.

Why is it that I hate monkeys so much?

I actually have to build up empathy to have it but I can lose it once I cut ties with a person.

You mean apes, not monkeys, I assume. Cos none of those are monkeys. My guess is it's because they are most closely related to humans, but I've no idea why, since you have empathy for humans. Interesting.

Monkeys can get mean when they get old. They can develop Alzheimer's just as humans do.

Monkeys can get mean when they get old. They can develop Alzheimer's just as humans do.

I have no idea, I think they are pretty fascinating and awesome.

You mean they can have memory loss?...That is what alzheimer's does is it causes memory loss not mean-ness per say. Of course one could become meaner with that disorder perhaps due to frusteration but I don't think meanness is the key trait.

I like mountain gorillas. And I don't really hate monkeys, I even have some plushies of the Monchhichi dolls, a sock monkey, and a Canada-themed red monkey in a white hoody. But I think the problem is that monkeys and apes are too similar to humans, and have negative traits that are eerily similar, including being
warlike.

I remember in Lady and the Tramp where Tramp takes Lady to a zoo to find an animal to help get her muzzle off, but he decides no to ask the monkeys because they're too closely related to humans.

I am fascinated with Baboons. Thts not to say they are a special interest but if I were to be channel surfing and landed on a nature documentary about them it might be worth a watch for me...

The empathy thing is ineresting, though. It takes a conscious effort for me to build up empathy for anything or anyone, almost like I'm trying to convince myself logically that I should have empathy for whatever I feel I need to have it for most times. But once it's there I genuinely "feel for," that person/animal/etc...

All living beings can be real bastards fighting for survival, but I guess it’s easier to see the more they are like us.

We met a woman at a Greyhound station in NewYork a few months ago who may of had alzheimers or some kind of dementia. She thought my girlfriend was her daughter who ran off with some bad man & she thought I was that man & kept insulting me. The police told her to leave Cass alone at one point(I had walked off for a minute to call my parents upstairs) but the woman didn't listen. I was so glad when our layover ended.

I have a very bad relationship with Barbary macaques as they once followed me around masturbating in Gibraltar. Found that fairly threatening, but maybe in Barbary macaques language that means something entirely different.

Perhaps the OP watched the show The Monkees too much or heard the theme song too much & started hating them

Beats me, but I too find monkeys and apes to be disgusting.
On the other hand, I absolutely love dogs. I won't deny that some dogs can do disgusting things, but they have redeeming qualities that vastly outweigh any bad qualities. To me, disgusting everything seems to be the salient characteristic for monkeys and apes.

I have felt this way about them since visiting the Pittsburgh Zoo as a young kit.

Other animals can annoy me too, but I still see them as animals. But monkeys, apes, whatever you call them, are too human to be animals but too animal to be humans. Maybe it's an uncanny valley thing, although they don't scare me, but maybe it still falls into the uncanny valley, I don't know.