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Monkey business: Why can't we all just get along?

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  1. #1

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    Monkey business: Why can't we all just get along?

    The news are reporting that a bunch of monkeys, a group of rhesus macaques to be precise, invaded a school basketball court at Tsz Wan Shan yesterday:

    Monkey business: primates invade Hong Kong basketball court | South China Morning Post

    They were eventually chased out by AFCD staff when they captured one of the females, scaring the rest of them back up into the hills. This follows a screed in the letter to the editor column, where the expat author calls for the extermination of the macaques as he regard them little more than vermin.

    Rather drastic I think. And it also betrays the ignorance of the author. True, most of the local population of macaques descended from released animals in the pre-ww2 era rather than the natural population (they were released to consume the poisonous plant strychnos, found in the Lion Rock area). However, HK is the natural habitat of these monkeys after all. The city is well within the range where these macaques occur. So one cannot regard them as "exotic" species. Extermination of them is therefore not the solution. The HK government in fact had launched a sterilization program to control the macaque population.

    But the larger point to ponder is, why can't we all get along? Isn't it remarkable that in a dense urban city like HK, there are still wildlife to be found? And in close proximity to humans? Can't we devise better ways to manage our co-existence rather than eliminate the other species (i.e. enforce the ban on feeding the monkeys)?

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  2. #2

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    ...another #occupy movement put down by force :-(

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  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by flameproof:
    ...another #occupy movement put down by force :-(
    Are the monkeys pro or anti Beijing?
    Cho-man likes this.

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by hullexile:
    Are the monkeys pro or anti Beijing?
    Hehehe, maybe they are spies sent by Beijing, to scout locations of anti-Beijing forces. But they got lost in the basketball court while on their way to their destination.

  5. #5

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    You don't need to exterminate all the monkeys. You just need to kill one chicken, then the monkeys will behave.

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  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by greenmark:
    You don't need to exterminate all the monkeys. You just need to kill one chicken, then the monkeys will behave.
    Yeah, I think that is the reason why the AFCD captured one of the monkeys to scare the rest.

    For those who have never been to Kam Shan Country Park (aka "Monkey Mountain" as the locals call them), here is a very interesting video feature on the macaques found there. I've been there several times myself and the macaques are not always as aggressive as this fella present them. People chase the monkeys away numerous times when I was there. Still, you do not want to approach them too closely:

    Last edited by Cho-man; 27-10-2015 at 02:40 PM.