Wild monkey injures people in New Delhi

A park scene illustrates a problem in New Delhi: As people push local monkeys out, the monkeys push, and sometimes bite, back.



A wild monkey went on a rampage in a low-income area of India's capital, injuring several people, most of them children, police said.
As New Delhi's forest cover shrinks, rhesus macaque monkeys have overrun its government buildings, temples and residential areas, occasionally biting passers-by or snatching food from them. A government official died last month when he fell from his balcony during an attack by wild monkeys.

The phenomenon is a side effect of India’s rapid urbanization. As Delhi expands, with half a million new residents moving in every year, the green areas in and around the capital, which for centuries have been the monkeys’ habitat, grow smaller. Their territory encroached on, many monkeys uproot to settle in the city center.

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts, encouraging them to frequent public places.


The Sydney Morning Herald