Japan’s marauding monkeys

 

Japan’s marauding monkeys

Officials in the western Japanese city of Yamaguchi killed a monkey this week that they believe was responsible for a spate of attacks against humans.

Approximately 25,000 monkeys are killed each year in Japan, mostly by municipalities. Clashes between humans and macaques — also known as snow monkeys — are becoming more frequent. In Yamaguchi alone, 56 victims were attacked by a monkey this month, including a baby girl injured in her home and a 4-year-old girl pounced on at a kindergarten.

Japan’s macaque population is thriving, in large part because conservation efforts have been a tad too successful. The population recovery has “provoked and intensified” human-macaque conflicts to the point where people living near the animals now face serious risks of having their own habitats invaded, Hiroto Enari, a primate expert, wrote in a recent study.

The most serious concern, Enari said, is that the animals could spread hepatitis B or other diseases to humans.

Elsewhere in Asia: Human-monkey conflicts are not new to the region. In Thailand, the city of Lopburi has been under siege for years from aggressive crab-eating macaques. In Singapore, officials recently had to guard an apartment complex from invading monkeys.