• India Life sentence for Kuala, the alcoholic and biting monkey

A year ago, in the Thai city of Lopburi, authorities had to

sterilize 500

street

monkeys

because they became very aggressive.

They attacked the neighbors, they entered the houses to steal food and they did not stop reproducing.

Even the police had to cordon off some parts of the city because the animals had turned sidewalks and facades into a mix between their amusement park and a fighting ring.

The economy of Lopburi, 150 kilometers northeast of Bangkok, was sustained thanks to foreign tourism that visited this

city ​​famous for its 2,000 monkeys

, which instead of being caged or in a zoo, roamed freely through the streets, living in harmony with the locals.

Until the pandemic arrived.

Thailand closed its borders on April 4, 2020. And tourists no longer came to Lopburi to feed bananas to the macaques, who mounted their particular rebellion to survive.

Not even the sugary drinks, cereals and sweets that the neighbors gave them managed to appease them.

There were scenes as surreal as one filmed on video, in which a group of monkeys are seen fighting in the street to see who would take a yogurt that one had stolen from a store.

"

Now we live in a cage

and the monkeys are outside," declared a neighbor to the AFP agency, assuring that she had to cover the terrace of her restaurant with an awning because the animals sneaked in in search of food.

"The monkeys in the city are used to being fed by tourists and generally do not need to hunt on their own. That has changed. Now they have become more aggressive and fight with humans to survive. They have more time and energy to reproduce. and cause problems, "explained a local vet named

Supakarn Kaewchot

.

The situation calmed down when authorities filled the city with large cages filled with fruit to attract and capture the monkeys.

Afterward, they were taken to veterinary clinics, where they had a vasectomy or a tubal ligation operation.

Attacks and robberies were reduced, but even today Thai newspapers report incidents from time to time.

This week, the monkeys are back in the news in Southeast Asia due to the altercations that exist on the tourist island of Bali, where these animals, lacking the food that tourists used to bring them, are raiding houses in search of food.

It occurs in Sangeh, a jungle famous for hosting a sanctuary where

600 macaques

live

.

Now, the animals escape to the nearest village.

According to the AP agency, which has visited the place, the monkey forest used to receive around 6,000 visitors a month, but as the pandemic spread last year, the authorities prohibited the entry of foreigners and residents to the sanctuary.

Monkeys often roam the village and sit on the roofs, occasionally removing the tiles and dropping them to the ground.

When Buddhist villagers leave daily offerings of food on their terraces, mostly fruit and cookies, the monkeys jump up and run away with the food.

This is one of those surreal stories swept away by the pandemic.

It may seem like lighthearted news amid so much death that the coronavirus is leaving.

Although the neighbors who have suffered the attacks and robberies of the monkeys do not like it.

But, for now, none of these hungry Asian monkeys have come to imitate the misdeeds of the famous

Kuala

, the first macaque to be sentenced to life in prison.

That happened in India last summer.

Kuala had bitten 250 people in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Even, according to local press clippings, he would have killed a four-year-old girl.

He snuck into her house and strangled her.

Also,

Kuala was an alcoholic monkey

.

The animal had withdrawal syndrome because its owner gave it liquor every day.

When it died, the lack of alcohol made the animal very aggressive and it began to bite everyone it encountered on the street.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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