PETA to Elon Musk: Use Your Own Brain & Leave Monkeys Alone

For Immediate Release:
February 1, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding reports that Elon Musk’s firm Neuralink placed a wireless implant in the skull of a monkey:

Elon Musk is no primatologist, or he’d never suggest a monkey who’s strapped to a chair with a metal device implanted in his skull and forced to watch video games all day is anything but miserable. Anyone who has a thorough understanding of the behavioural, social, and emotional needs of monkeys knows they are highly intelligent fellow primates who form deep bonds, experience every emotion humans do, and can suffer just as much as we can – especially when they’re mutilated and denied everything that’s that natural and important to them. Money clearly can’t buy you empathy or an understanding of who animals are, since the richest man in the world is still devoid of common kindness. PETA challenges Musk to behave like a true pioneer and have the wireless implant put into his own brain instead.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”— opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.