“Is it right, in the deepest moral sense, for one conscious being to eat another?” In Eating Apes, Dale Peterson takes readers through what he has experienced, seen, and the problems presented in trying to protect apes to help us answer this question. He was able to do this with the stories of Karl Ammann, author of the photographs presented in the book, and Joseph Melloh, gorilla hunter from Cameroon. Before taking this course, my knowledge of endangered monkeys was to the point of knowing that we had to save them from extinction. However, I knew neither how the brutal apes were treated nor how important they were to the diet of the people of Central Africa – until I started reading Eating Apes. Eating Apes is a descriptive but difficult to read book that describes why the ape population was declining and the various stakeholders involved. Peterson wrote this book to illustrate and inform others about how humans killed and ate apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. for food in Central Africa. He also tries to understand what was happening in Central Africa by interviewing monkey hunters. These interviews helped him understand that hunting was not a matter of hunger, but a choice. Hunters working trappers in the Central African Republic can earn between $400 and $700 a year, an amount comparable to the salary earned by national park rangers (115). In other words, hunters earned a reasonable amount of money by hunting and continuing to do so. While traveling through Central Africa, Peterson also took time to explore meat markets and soon discovered that chimpanzee and gorilla meat was selling for higher prices than beef or pork, because they were considered items of luxury. ...... middle of paper ...... reward and help. We may not all be conservation biologists, but I think getting our local communities to petition or raise money and raise further awareness of the species can help. But that's not all: writing letters to big companies like CIB and expressing our opinions on the bushmeat crisis will help them understand that their actions are affecting everyone globally. I believe that many of the multinational corporations involved in and behind the illegal slaughter of monkeys assume that their actions only affect local populations and that those populations benefit from the food and money. However, I believe that once these companies realize that the bushmeat crisis and illegal killing of monkeys are harmful on a global scale, we can effectively contribute to ending the bushmeat crisis. Works Cited Eating Monkeys by Dale Peterson