India has hired a group of monkey impersonators to scare the real
marauding animals away from parliament and other key buildings in
the nation's capital, officials said Thursday
The "very talented" group of men has taken to wearing monkey masks,
imitating their whoops and barks and hiding behind trees to ward
off the aggressive animals, the head of the Delhi municipality told
AFP.
Groups of monkeys, which are revered in the majority Hindu nation,
roam freely around Delhi's streets where they trash gardens,
offices and even attack people in their search for food.
Concerns about the monkey population were raised in parliament
where India's government was asked what it was doing to combat the
problem.
An Indian minister said 40 trained men had in fact been hired to
protect the raucous house, itself accused of monkey-like behaviour,
from the animal intruders.
"Various efforts are being made to tackle the monkey and dog menace
inside and around the parliament house," Urban Development Minister
M Venkaiah Naidu said in a written reply to a lawmaker's
question.
"The measures include scaring the monkeys away by trained persons
who disguise themselves as langurs (long tailed monkeys)."
"The New Delhi Municipal Corporation has hired 40 young persons for
this purpose," Naidu added.
The NDMC, the body tasked with providing civic services, said the
men were "very talented" and had been trained to "closely copy" the
noises and actions of the more aggressive langurs to scare away the
smaller rhesus macaques.
"They often wear a mask on their faces, hide behind the trees and
make these noises to scare away the simians," NDMC chairman Jalaj
Srivastava told AFP.
Monkey catchers and their trained langurs used to be hired by
wealthy home owners, politicians and business people to
patrol the streets to keep wild monkeys at bay.
But the government cracked down on the business last year after a
court ruled that keeping monkeys in captivity was cruel.
Parliament