According to the Indian authorities, macaques in the country are becoming increasingly aggressive and violent towards the people, whereas hundreds of thousands of animals threaten human populations on a daily basis.
The primates are allegedly invading residential areas in search of food due to the ever-shrinking natural habitat available to them.
As a result, there have been plenty of cases in which the macaques confronted people and even attacked them for their food or belongings.
In one recent incident, a 4-month-old infant was killed after a macaque dropped a large stone on its head in one of the country’s northern regions. During the attack, the baby boy was resting on the ground with his parents.
In another incident, a 72-year-old man was surrounded by macaques which stoned him to death with bricks as they were hiding in the trees.
The attack happened while the elderly man was collecting wood in the forest near his home. After his passing, the family was upset because the authorities marked his death as an accident.
“The rhesus macaques, generally speaking, are a harmless and peaceful species. They live in troops, with each troop consisting of infants, sub-adults, sexually mature adults, and the elderly,” primatologist Iqbal Malik told Gizmodo.
“Infants stay close to their mothers up to the age of six months, and the mother-infant bond is extremely strong.
“Large-scale deforestation destroys their natural habitats, resulting in the fragmentation of groups and causing monkeys to move towards rural and urban areas in search of food.”
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Replaced!