What Is “Monkey Business”? A Brief and Entirely Serious Linguistic Inquiry

Let’s get one thing straight before we proceed: this gallery is called Monkey Business, and that title was chosen with great care, a great deal of deliberation, and — if we’re being honest — a distinct lack of either. Because “monkey business” is, in the grand tradition of English idioms, a phrase that manages to mean two slightly contradictory things at once, and to somehow be perfectly useful in both cases.

On the harmless end of the spectrum, it refers to playful, silly, mildly chaotic behaviour — the sort of thing you’d associate with a toddler, a golden retriever, or most office birthday parties. On the rather less harmless end, it describes conduct that is deceptive, dishonest, or borderline illegal. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it with admirable brevity as “behaviour that is not acceptable or is dishonest.” The Britannica Dictionary is feeling slightly more charitable and allows for “playful tricks or jokes” as well. In short: it depends on the monkey.

Etymologically speaking, things get genuinely interesting. The phrase turns up in English as early as the 1830s — and not, as one might imagine, because some Victorian gentleman watched a primate steal his hat and coined a term on the spot. Linguists and the Oxford English Dictionary suggest it is most likely a calque (a loan translation) of the Bengali word bãdrāmi (বা়দারামি), meaning “mischief” or, more literally, “monkey-behaviour.” There is also a Sanskrit parallel in vānara-karman — vānara meaning monkey, and karman meaning deed or action. A letter from British Parliamentarian Thomas Perronet Thompson, dating to 1837, even explicitly references “the Native Indian term for the supreme of folly” as the conceptual source — a reminder that British colonial contact with India imported rather more than spices into the English language.

For the record, the word monkey itself only entered English around the 1520s. Before that, English-speakers made do with “ape” for all primates, presumably because the concept of a monkey had not yet arrived to demand its own word. It likely derives from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch — moneke or monnekijn — and as European zoos proliferated in the 19th century and ordinary people got their first direct looks at actual primates, monkey-related idioms multiplied accordingly. Apparently, watching a monkey for the first time is an experience that immediately generates vocabulary.

Into the Gallery: Surely They’re Innocent

Now. Whether the specific primates in this gallery harbour the kinds of thoughts the phrase “monkey business” implies — scheming, deceitful, larcenous thoughts — is, of course, impossible to say with any certainty. Animals cannot speak in their own defence (a fact which has historically worked in their favour, legally speaking), and a portrait is, after all, just a fraction of a second frozen in time. Perhaps each subject was, at that precise moment, thinking about something entirely wholesome. A favourite tree. A nice piece of fruit. The structural integrity of the nearest fence.

Perhaps.

Some of the portraits in this collection genuinely radiate serenity. A kind of meditative calm, even. The sort of expression you might see on a philosophy professor, or on someone who has just finished their second coffee and is feeling, briefly, at peace with the world. In these cases, one is compelled to project nothing but nobility onto the subject. We see depth. We see wisdom. We see a creature that has figured something out that we haven’t.

And then there are the others.

A number of faces in this gallery — and I will name names — carry an expression that is harder to characterize as entirely innocent. There is something in the narrowing of the eyes, a certain sideways quality, a look that suggests the subject is not so much seeing you as assessing you. Calculating, one might say. Perhaps running through options.

The prime suspects, photographically speaking, are the pig-tailed macaques and the baboons.

The pig-tailed macaque (Macaca leonina and Macaca nemestrina) is named for its short, curled, upward-pointing tail — a physical characteristic that the animal has apparently decided to compensate for by developing an extraordinarily expressive face. Native to Southeast Asia and possessed of high social intelligence, the pig-tailed macaque in a portrait tends to look as though it has recently been told something it already knew. The combination of a pale, slightly furrowed brow, a brown crown, and eyes set at an angle that conveys something between mild suspicion and quiet contempt makes for photographs that are, depending on your perspective, either deeply charming or faintly accusatory. Possibly both at once.

The baboons, meanwhile, require no introduction in the category of Faces That Raise Questions. With their long, structured faces, pronounced brow ridges, and eyes that hold your gaze with an intensity that border on confrontational, a baboon portrait can range from unexpectedly tender to distinctly unsettling — and occasionally both, within the same image. A baboon does not look at a camera so much as consider it. Whether it approves is not always clear.

The Art of Looking Back

Wildlife portraiture, at its best, does something elegantly simple: it invites you to look into another face and find something familiar there. With primates, that recognition is fast and instinctive. The evolutionary kinship is legible in every expression — the curiosity, the wariness, the rapid flicker of something that looks very much like a thought crossing a face before it disappears again.

These are not passive subjects. They look back. Some with apparent indifference. Some with what appears to be polite interest. And some — particularly the pig-tailed macaques and the baboons, it must be said — with an expression that strongly suggests they know exactly what is going on, have a view on it, and are keeping that view to themselves for now.

Whether any actual monkey business is being conducted remains, as of publication, unconfirmed.

I am watching closely.

All photographs are original black-and-white portraits. No monkeys were given any business to conduct during the making of this gallery. Any resemblance to scheming, calculating, or vaguely suspicious behavior is purely coincidental and entirely the viewer’s interpretation.