Many primate owners allow their monkey to run around in the house for short periods of time since it provides great exercise. Before doing so, it is important to monkey proof your house as much as possible.
Due to the speed monkeys are able to move, it only takes a few seconds for your monkey to get into trouble so it is important you keep an eye on them at all times. While it might be very difficult to monkey proof your entire house, you can monkey proof certain rooms. The only room that is rather hard to monkey proof is the kitchen. It isn’t the first time a monkey gets burned from the stove top or by leaping into a pot of boiling water. While the kitchen should truly be of limits, you most certainly should not be cooking while your monkey is in the room. Many species are able to turn the stove handles so if your monkey is allowed to be in the kitchen, it is recommended you take the handles off and store them in a drawer.
Be carefull with appliance cords. Your monkey might pull on them and if they get in contact with the current, it will most likely result in death. It is also recommended to use child proof safety covers where you need to twist the plugin before you can make contact. If your monkey remains unattended in a room with plugins, it is highly recommended to cover them completely.
Depending on the size of your monkey, it is recommended you child proof all cabinets and drawers. At a very minimum make sure to child proof your medicine cabinet and cabinets that contain toxic products. I’ve tried several child proof locks with our capuchin and the only locks he has not been able to open up are the magnetic door lock shown in the picture. Once installed, the only way to open up the drawer or cabinet is with a magnet.
Lamps seem to fascinate all species. Even for small species lamps are dangerous since they can knock them over while leaping across the room. My capuchin used to climb our standing lamp in our bedroom to mess with the lightbulb and succeeded several times in knocking the standing lamp on the ground while it was plugged in. I eventually removed the standing lamp and installed a ceiling light to prevent any further risk for injury. I’ve read about capuchins being able to unscrew light bulbs, putting clothes on top of lamps nearly causing a fire, and squirrel monkeys knocking over lamps while playing. Even our marmoset caused some of our lamps to knock over while running around in the house.
Rooms that your monkey is not allowed to enter should be locked with a key. Our capuchin is able to open up a door within 2 seconds by turning the knob if we didn’t lock it with a key.
Before we ever let our capuchin run around loose, we always do a quick run around the house making sure remote controls are put away (he’ll take the cover off and batteries out in a matter of seconds), bathroom and a few other rooms are locked, cats are put in bedroom of kids, pens, and other potentially dangerous or breakable objects are put away, and windows are closed.