Unfortunately not entirely true, depending on where you live.
Americans would be astounded to learn the usual settlements awarded for deaths due to traffic accidents (as an example I'm familiar with) in South America.
Payments of 25.000 dollars aren't uncommon. Colombia and Uruguay pay around U$ 150.000 per death. Heck, even first world countries like Spain can pay less than that.
So, an expensive monkey pet can be more expensive than a human.