Monkey Security Guards at Commonwealth Games

What would you do if you had gangs of monkeys roaming through your town, stealing things at will, and bothering people?  Why, you’d bring in some enforcer monkeys to act as security guards. That’s what they’re doing in New Delhi, India at the venues for the Commonwealth Games, set to open October 3rd. 

It seems that packs of Rhesus macaque monkeys have free run of the city, in large part because Hindus see them as a manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman.  The problem is, these monkeys can get very aggressive and harass people; in 2007, the deputy mayor of New Delhi died in a fall while fighting off a pack of attacking monkeys.  If you’re trying to run a big showcase event like the Commonwealth Games, you don’t want sports fans to be attacked by a gangs of badass monkeys now, do you?  No, you bring in your own muscle in the form of langur monkeys.

Langurs are bigger than Rhesus macaques and are very good at scaring them away.  And they work for peanuts.  And bananas.

They’ve got other problems at the Commonwealth Games venues and in New Delhi.  They’ve deployed 600 traps to deal with a rat problem, a Cobra was found at the tennis venue, the athletes village was barely finished in time,  there is a dengue fever outbreak, and the Australian Government issued a warning to its citizens traveling to the games that New Delhi was at a high risk of a terrorist attack.  India has 100,000 (human) security guards deployed to deal with that.  The participating nations in the Commonwealth games are from the Commonwealth of Nations, mostly former members of the British Empire.  Canada is a participant in the games; the United States is not.

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