The Hot Zone Lesson Plan

Preston spends a long time describing the habits and social structures of crab eating monkeys. Why do you think that is?

Discussions should include the fact that Preston highlights the military-style culture of crab eating monkeys — they are called "troops" and have a dominant male hierarchy. This serves to point out the similarity of the monkey force to the army force that will later euthanize the group en masse. He also talks at length about the physical characteristics of the monkeys and how similar they are to humans. This humanizes the monkeys for the audience, who later will read about their deaths. But it also emphasizes how tiny are the changes a virus like Ebola...