China, is the only known nation to have a practice of eating live monkey brains. The practice is believed to have originated in the Hunan Province where people would go to local markets to buy live monkeys where the skull of the monkey would be cracked open and the brain consumed.
This practice, although distasteful, believe it stems from a local superstition in the belief that consuming the brain of a monkey will lead to increased intellectual ability as well as health-related benefits. Although most Chinese people surveyed generally condemned or disagreed with the practice, it still persists in certain communities to this day.