Monkeys may swing elections, but Delhi doesn’t want them
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
DELHI–“Marauding monkeys and the chaos they spread across
New Delhi” were “an important issue” in the April 2007 municipal
elections, reported Rahul Bedi of The Daily Telegraph.
But the outcome for monkeys was not apparent in the election
results, because no party really seems to have a politically viable
and popular solution.
Members of the Congress Party most flamboyantly campaigned against
“the monkey menace.” The Congress Party recommended raising a
“monkey army” of chained languors, to roust the smaller and much
more abundant rhesus macaques who cause most of the monkey trouble.
Indeed, chained languors are at times employed successfully
to guard specific locations for limited times–but apart from the
humane issues involved in capturing and training them, they are
often the losers when troupes of macaques gang up and counter-attack.
Few politicians other than former federal minister for animal
welfare Maneka Gandhi advocate leaving street dogs alone, to chase
off monkeys as they have for centuries. But several Delhi citizens
gave testimony to Bedi suggesting that urbanized macaques have become
a much bigger threat than street dogs ever were, except possibly in
potential for carrying rabies, and macaques can transmit rabies too,
if infected.