India Pays 40 Actors To Mimic Large Monkeys To Solve Infestation Of Smaller Monkeys
By March 12, 2021
The people of New Delhi, India are dealing one of the most mind-boggling infestations of the 20th century: monkeys. Cute as they may be, the macaques have overrun the area and created mass chaos. There seemed to be an easy solution: The estimated 40,000 monkeys in New Delhi have no problem interacting with humans, but they balk at confrontation with other monkeys. Unfortunately, it's super illegal to make monkeys fight, so the government started paying 40 actors to pretend to be giant monkeys to scare the smaller monkeys out of town.
Monkey Trouble
The red-faced rhesus macaque didn't just set up shop in New Delhi one day. They've always lived in the hills of northern India, but as cities expanded into their natural habitat, things got heated. Their natural food sources were damaged to the point that it was eventually easier to find food in the city, and it didn't help that urban dwellers were so charmed by the exotic primates that they were more than happy to feed them by hand. It stopped being cute, however, when the interaction led the monkeys to lose their fear of humans and eventually become aggressive if their demands for food weren't met.
It's not just the people of New Delhi suffering under the macaques' rule. They cause a ton of property damage, even breaking into government buildings and destroying documents. When the 3,000-year-old holy city of Varanasi laid fiber-optic cables to roll out WiFi through the area, hundred of monkeys chewed it up before it could be used.
Gorilla Warfare
The first real plan to address the macaque infestation was to pit them against black-faced langurs, a larger, more aggressive monkey. Animal rights activists quashed that idea in 2014, arguing that it was cruel to keep langurs captive for the sole purpose of fighting monkeys, so officials in India decided the next best thing was to dress adults like giant monkeys.
Seriously. Referred to as a "very talented" group of "ape repellers," the 40 men with this job roll in wherever there's a monkey crowd in their costumes and whoop and bark to clear the area. As contract employees with the government, they make good money to monkey around, even if the effect of their work is only temporary. More often than not, the macaques bail as soon as the actors show up, but they return once the men clock out for the day.
