EWWW SAD

Live Monkey Brains


Most people probably have heard the tale of the barbaric foreigners who strap a live monkey down and eat its brains while it screams. It has even made it into the Hollywood mainstream in movies like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." The common aspects of this story, as it is almost always told, make it an excellent illustration of a classic urban legend.

Recipe

Legends have traditionally been passed down orally and it is no different with the Live Monkey Brain legend. The following is the universal recipe for this legend:

Take one (1) living monkey. The story does not work without the kicking and the screaming and the biting. Just eating monkey brain stew is not particularly interesting or shocking.
Strap beneath special table with hole in center. The monkey must be strapped beneath a table with its head poking up through a hole.
Bop monkey on the head, scoop and serve. The diners usually deliver the fatal blow themselves with hammers, the skull is sawed off and the brains are scooped out with spoons.
That's about as complex as the legend gets, but I'd like to add two special ingredients that you may not have noticed in your culinary excursions:

Others do it in other places. This is universal in every version I have ever heard or seen. Americans say the Taiwanese do it. Indonesians say the Taiwanese do it. Taiwanese say that Hong Kongers do it. Hong Kongers say it is rural Chinese on the border with Vietnam. Historical versions by officials from Beijing (in the North) report that it is Southerners who do it. Variations might get as close as another ethnic group in the same area or even that Grandfather did it once in the old days, but you rarely hear a reliable first hand account, which brings us to...
A friend of a friend told me. The story is often claimed true because a friend had a friend who was in Asia during the Vietnam war who ate monkey brains or saw tables with holes while traveling. Occasionally, someone does tell this as a first hand story, but (with two anecdotal exceptions) everyone I have ever challenged has backed down or has been unable to provide convincing details. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
http://maxent.org/ch/monkey_brains.html