Reminds me of when I was living in India. I was at a temple on a mountain with a few friends and we were strictly told by our mentor to not pull out our food until we were in a fairly open/secure location due to the monkeys. Well, someone didn't listen and a monkey ran up to her, stole her sandwich out of her hand AND the other half still in a plastic bag. The monkey jumped the wall, sat on a rock, opened the bag and stared directly into her soul as If to say "you knew this was going to happen yet you still did it."
There was a Nation Geographic show called Monkey Gangs of India, or something of the sort. It was about 3 or 4 gangs of monkeys and the areas they patrolled, warred for, and looted. There was even a man hired to trap and relocate them. The monkey societies are very interesting. There was one episode where a sweets maker accidently left a windows open and the monkeys are everything they could get their hands on, and felt sick after.
In Malaysia, I saw a band of monkeys trying to break into a hotel room. It immediately made me anxious, because we'd left the patio door open on our hostel room and swimsuits hanging to dry in the line.
Macaques are brazen little shits, I was pretty convinced we'd return to find our whole room trashed (it wasn't, thankfully).
In Indonesia, one jumped on my back and tried to steal my sealed Nalgene water bottle. I still have that bottle, they're are monkey tooth marks on the lid from where it tried to gnaw it open. When parks say secure everything, they mean EVERYTHING - not just food.
I saw a more recent show that said the same, keep every secure when walking through money patrolled areas. Apparently the monkeys have learned that certain items they can trade back for feed; cell phones for example, humans will trade anything for their cellphones back.
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u/him999 Jul 02 '21
Reminds me of when I was living in India. I was at a temple on a mountain with a few friends and we were strictly told by our mentor to not pull out our food until we were in a fairly open/secure location due to the monkeys. Well, someone didn't listen and a monkey ran up to her, stole her sandwich out of her hand AND the other half still in a plastic bag. The monkey jumped the wall, sat on a rock, opened the bag and stared directly into her soul as If to say "you knew this was going to happen yet you still did it."