Japanese macaques - cute and cuddly or a menace?

I live on an island with 6000 wild macaque monkeys roaming the mountains. It's an area of 500 square kilometres and consists almost totally of mountains and forest. You'd think that the monkeys would be lost somewhere deep in the trees – but no – they hang around watching traffic and stealing from orange trees.

To anyone who is not sure what they look like:



Vaguely cute in a planet of the apes kind of way.

But is everyone aware of the sheer menace of these cute furry primates.

"I was making lunch in the kitchen, and when I looked back, a monkey was standing in the hallway," said Teruko Iwasaki, 49, telling of the uninvited visitor to her Kagoshima home.

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A hiker who said he was chased by a group of monkeys on Yaku Island in September fell off a rock, dislocated his left shoulder, and had to be extricated by helicopter.

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A 67-year-old woman sued the Mino City municipality in Osaka for 6 million yen ($50,000) because she fell off a step and broke her leg after being surprised by a monkey in a city park.

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These are merely the tip of the iceberg. The Washington post comments:

From a scraggly postwar population of 15,000, the number of monkeys has increased tenfold in half a century, reaching 150,000 today.

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In some cities, the police talk of these mischievous balls of fur as mysterious adversaries:

"The monkey is a tough opponent," huffed a police officer in Kagoshima, where the child was bitten in September by a monkey that eluded police. "He appears and disappears like a ghost. Today, he may appear on the top of a roof. Tomorrow, he may be somewhere else.

"We couldn't capture him," the officer admitted. But, he added, "we couldn't have charged him either."

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The numbers are becoming so large that they are coming out of their natural habitats or that should probably read – so much of their natural habitats have been destroyed, that there is a growing need to control them. And the attempts to control where they roam seems to be more of a war between monkeys and humans:

police have chased monkeys with nets. Farmers have set out firecrackers, sound machines and dogs. In one high-tech system, monkeys are blasted with pepper spray when they hit a tripwire. In another, a radio collar with alarms is fastened on monkeys to roust farmers to chase them away.

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The sad thing is however that…

Nearly 500 municipalities offer bounties, averaging $165 per corpse, according to the animal rights group All Life in a Viable Environment (ALIVE).

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But not where I live! The whole 6000 of them have no bounties on their heads and can roam at will.

Now through my daily interaction, I have learnt a few rules about monkeys which if you should meet one walking down the street or hanging from a tree or relaxing on the curb watching the cars speed by, might just save you from the wrath of the monkey.

Rule 1: Do not look cute little monkey in the eyes.

Cute little monkey then becomes sharp toothed monkey, and then sharp-toothed aggressive monkey and then attacking sharp-toothed aggressive monkey.

Rule 2: Monkeys are not alone

I caught two large males in my tree stealing persimmon and chased the buggers towards the bushes. Two minutes later they came back in a gang with five in total. The new ones looked real mean and were looking for a punch-up. I left them to it.

Rule 3: Monkeys hate red pepper, basil and aloe.

Who knows why but they do. Never leave home without them.

Rule 4: Do not run when a monkey attacks

Personally they have chased me to my motorbike and then when I was actually on it riding away. But the best thing to do if said monkey runs towards is stand your ground and it stops well before you and whimpers away.

Rule 5: Monkeys like humble humans

If you encounter a group of monkeys, keep your head down and sit quietly and they ignore you. I once had a young furball lean on my lap and drift off to sleep.

Rule 6: Do not take an onsen bath with a monkey

When monkeys relax in the warm water of an outside onsen, they do not unfortunately have any social control over which muscles they relax and before long there is a brown thing floating on the water surface.

Now….Can anyone add some more monkey rules or anything about Japanese macaques?

If humans didn't encroch on there habitat they wouldn't be in the citys ask yourself what was there before the houses and the cars thats right there homes

If Humans want to steal from nature then they have to live with the concequences

But they can't they want to take away animals homes food and flesh then irradicate them becouse they see them as a pest

OK end my enviroment rant

Wow you live in a place with six thousend wild monkeys ow my God can we swoop if you don't like the monkeys theres none round here where i live

You are so lucky i would love to live in a place where there was wildlife like that do you get a lot of spiders i wan a blue tarantula but my mom wont let me have one

I know monkeys can be a pest sometimes but think about it would you rather have a bostirous monkey or some yob that is willing to rape murder and beat for the sake of recording it on his mobule phone for a laugh

Ooops he he i'm back to my rant again

Lol the Police mysterious adverseris all i can see is the police stalking a monkey lol it would make a great Manga

Rule 5: Monkeys like humble humans

If you encounter a group of monkeys, keep your head down and sit quietly and they ignore you. I once had a young furball lean on my lap and drift off to sleep.

Rule 6: Do not take an onsen bath with a monkey

When monkeys relax in the warm water of an outside onsen, they do not unfortunately have any social control over which muscles they relax and before long there is a brown thing floating on the water surface.

Nowﾂ….Can anyone add some more monkey rules or anything about Japanese macaques?

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A monkey fell asleep on your lap i would have cryed people would have thought i was mad sitting on a bench crying coz i was so happy over the monkey

Lol somethin brown in the water ha ha i can imagine that

miki78 said:

If humans didn't encroch on there habitat they wouldn't be in the citys ask yourself what was there before the houses and the cars thats right there homes
If Humans want to steal from nature then they have to live with the concequences
But they can't they want to take away animals homes food and flesh then irradicate them becouse they see them as a pest
OK end my enviroment rant

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I like your rants miki78! What you say I agree with 100%. One of the reasons I'm here on the island is because it is one of the few places in Japan that has the balance about right. (Nature comes first - people second)

miki78 said:

do you get a lot of spiders i wan a blue tarantula but my mom wont let me have one

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I've got to side with your mother here. I'm not a spider lover. Why a blue tarantula? But yes there are big scary looking spiders here but no hairy ones.

miki78 said:

I know monkeys can be a pest sometimes but think about it would you rather have a bostirous monkey or some yob that is willing to rape murder and beat for the sake of recording it on his mobule phone for a laugh

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Ah! The joys of Britain. I'd almost forgotten.

miki78 said:

A monkey fell asleep on your lap i would have cryed

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Yep. There's something really special at just sitting amongst a group and watch them play, fight and sleep. I may joke about how aggressive and mean looking they are but I have a soft spot for them.

I remember when I lived in Yamaguchi, and there were bears, monkeys, and all sorts of wild animals. I never really had any problems with them, though.

I remember learning that if a wild boar comes running at you, the best thing to do is to open an umbrella so it can't see you anymore!

Well, when I visited a monkey zoo called Nihon Monkey Park in Inuyama, Aichi, when I was a small kid, there we found a huge cage of risuzaru (squirrel monkey / saimiri sciureus)


I doubt they still have that kind of special cage any more, but back then,
you could actually open the door of the cage and step into it, where bunch of risuzaru were hanging around. Before the small adventure, the people there told us some no-no's. I don't remember all of them but some were:

1)Do not look straight in their eyes
2)They are not tame puppies or stuffed animals, don't try to catch and hold one, they will not like that.
3)They will jump on you and be all over you, so be well prepared mentally and do not scream or run.
4)Don't put your hand in your pocket, they will think you have something to eat there and jump on your hand all at once, scratch, and bite it.
5)Just walk from the entrance straight to the exit, not too fast, not too slowly, and don't stop.
6)And we were told to leave our bags and stuff outside of the cage, they know what we have inside of them.

My small adventure there took only 1 or 2 minutes, but they were actually all over me, like 3 on my head, 5 on my body, 3 on my each arm, 2 on my each leg. But thanks to the preliminary advice of the people there, none of us got hurt or scared too much, but it wasn't such a pleasant experience. That's why I doubt that they still have that huge cage of risuzaru any more.

Monkeys!
I had to learn those rules at school because our school was in a mountain, and we sometimes saw monkeys, deers, etc.
And the teachers often wrote the rules on the notice board

chickie said:

Monkeys!
I had to learn those rules at school because our school was in a mountain, and we sometimes saw monkeys, deers, etc.
And the teachers often wrote the rules on the notice board

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Wow, where was that? Sounds like a real nice place!

Mikawa Ossan said:

I remember when I lived in Yamaguchi, and there were bears, monkeys, and all sorts of wild animals. I never really had any problems with them, though.
I remember learning that if a wild boar comes running at you, the best thing to do is to open an umbrella so it can't see you anymore!

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I was pondering your suggestion Mikawa and then on a search came across a series summary of Ranma ½ the manga...and low and behold, what did I find?

In a village a huge wild boar is running rampage, until a young man wearing a bandana, carrying a back-pack, stops it one-handed with his bamboo umbrella.

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You didn't by any chance wear a bandana and equip yourself with bamboo in your younger years did you? They surely based the character on someone.

While visiting a temple in Bali, I was harrassed by a bunch of monkeys
just like those, spoilt the whole excursion. they were way too
tame, jumping on people, looking for food.

Kyoko, fantastic picture. They make the macaques look like grumpy old men.



Yes, I think the days of walk-in monkey cages are perhaps gone. But I would have been scared witless if someone read out those rules before I went in the cage. Especially the scratch and bite all at once manoeuvre.

Have you ever been to see the monkeys in Aichi? I came across some bizarre research about them – they speak in a unique Aichi monkey accent.

Researchers at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute have found that monkeys cry in different "dialects" depending on where they live.
They studied two groups of Yakushima macaque from 1990 until 2000. The first group consisted of 23 female monkeys living on the island, while the second was made up of 30 female descendants of the same species group that were taken from the island to Mount Ohira in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, in 1956.
They found that the island group had a tone about 110 hertz higher in average than the group brought to Aichi Prefecture.

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Chickie – Sounds a nice place to live. I have the same question as Kyoko - where were you? And what did they write on the board?

I came across an article on macaques that shed an unusual light on their behaviour. The article was called:

Lesbian Japanese monkeys challenge Darwin's assumptions

Lesbian what? I had to read moreﾂ…

Dr Paul Vasey, of the University of Lethbridge, Canada reports that after studying Japanese macaques in the wild, he found, contrary to popular belief, that bisexuality is common in females and that they often compete with males for sexual partners.

"In some populations, female Japanese macaques sometimes prefer same-sex partners," he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver. "That occurs even when they are presented with sexually motivated, opposite-sex alternatives."

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In other words the male monkeys are so tedious with their repetitive chat up lines and silly boisterous behaviour, that despite having their pick of the whole bunch, the monkey females prefer their liaisons with other monkey females.

He adds that:

"I see females competing for males all the time," he said. "I see males ignoring females that are desperate to copulate with them."

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So the lazy male couldn't care less about sex, he'd much rather lie by the roadside and chew on leaves. The females however - well it seems that are rampant.

His parting shot was:

"Female choice, I am pretty sure, has much more to do with managing male power than it does with trying to obtain good genes."

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Females controlling male power? With sex? Could this have cross species connotations for us humans? Nopeﾂ… never heard of that one before in the human world. The researcher must be a loony.

This all seems rather strangeﾂ…I meanﾂ…next some expert is going to tell us that as well as lesbianism and the sexual management of males, the monkey females are into things like bestialityﾂ…

ﾂ…erﾂ…..Hang on!....

Mikawa Ossan said:

I remember learning that if a wild boar comes running at you, the best thing to do is to open an umbrella so it can't see you anymore!

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Oh if only it had been raining. May be these people would have had a chance.

Four people suffered an ominous start to the Year of the Boar when they were attacked in the street -- by wild boars.

At about 4 p.m. on Monday, a wild boar hit a 56-year-old woman on a street near Yawatahama Summary Court in Yawatahama, local police said. She was taken to hospital with mild injuries.

Investigators found three more people also suffered minor injuries after being attacked by wild boars nearby at almost the same time.

Local police suspect that several different wild boars attacked the four, noting that their descriptions of the animals were different.

The attacks occurred in a residential area about 200 meters away from a mountain. (Mainichi)

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Are there any other ways to stop a boar?

The point of the umbrella is to erect a visual barrier. It's a lot like how one of the methods I understand big game hunters used in Africa once upon a time. You encircle the animal with a long piece of cloth to make it think that there is no escape, and then you do whatever you do to the animal.

Obviously it only would work on certain animals that go no further in thought than, "Oh, gee there's something there. Guess there's no use going in that direction!"

I feel bad for the injured people, though.

Mikawa, I don't doubt the effectiveness of your technique for a second. I think it would work and I'll look forward to the day I can test it.

I always thought boars were a bit dumb but this looks like the work of a gang of pros. A quick coordinated attack and slipping back into the forest without a trace. I dunno but I think they would have stolen the umbrella.

Local police suspect that several different wild boars attacked the four, noting that their descriptions of the animals were different.

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