The reputation of monkeys on Mount Emei is getting worse and worse, from everyone's favorite spirit monkey completely turned into a "splash monkey", not only grabbing things from tourists, but also "beating" tourists, pulling tourists' hair, simply the mountain bandits.

In this case, the "human-monkey war" in Emei Mountain has intensified, and there was even an incident where the monkey king led a group of monkeys to mob the tourists, and the monkey king was killed on the spot because the incident was extremely bad.

So, why are the monkeys on Mount Emei so vicious? What exactly is the reason for their frequent attacks on tourists?

Monkeys in Emei Mountain

Monkeys have always been a rather spiritual creature in the eyes of humans and are loved by people. As a famous Buddhist mountain in China, Mount Emei not only has a beautiful landscape, but also attracts people to visit the mountain for religious reasons, hoping to be blessed and get good luck.

So when people travel to Mount Emei, they also make it a point to see the monkeys in the mountain, believing that they live in the Buddhist holy land all year round, the body of the "spirit" must be more, and even call them monkey guru, ape guru.

The monkeys here belong to the genus Macaque, called Emei Tibetan Sheikh monkey, a subspecies of Tibetan Sheikh monkey, living at an altitude of about 800 meters to 2,400 meters, with a total of about 1,000 monkeys, belonging to the national second-class protection.

Compared to the monkeys we all think of, these monkeys are very large, with adult males reaching a maximum of 21.5 kg and females 15 kg. As a gregarious animal, Emei monkeys prefer to have dozens of them together in packs. Of course, some particularly large families may have hundreds of monkeys.

Emmy monkeys are omnivores, and enjoy a small snack for a snack while their main diet is leaves.

However, as more and more tourists, Emei monkeys are getting bloated, after all, they not only eat or grab the bread and other food carried by tourists, some even even Sichuan's unique soda "Emei snow" are not spared, grabbed away and began to drink.

Emei monkeys themselves are far away from human activity areas and will only occasionally meet with monks in the deep mountains. But since the uncontrolled deforestation by humans, these monkeys have lost their homes.

In order to protect them, Emei Mountain has set up an ecological wild monkey area, which is similar to the "Mountain of Flowers and Fruits" in "Journey to the West". However, there is also a walkway, a rope bridge and a viewing platform nearby for people to visit, watch and entertain the monkeys.

It was thought that in this way of thinking, both protecting the monkeys and developing tourism projects would simply be a good thing to kill two birds with one stone. But I didn't expect things to develop in a strange direction, and the "conflict" between humans and monkeys is getting bigger and bigger.

The "human-monkey war" is intensifying

Because it is a second-class national protection animals, so the beginning of the treatment of these monkeys are more "polite", I did not expect this courtesy but to encourage the monkeys, making them more and more arrogant.

It is reported that a rather majestic monkey king previously appeared on Emei Mountain, which is the leader of the Leidongping monkey group, whose group has more than 200 monkeys.

It may be that "there is no tiger in the mountain, the monkey called the king" too many days, the monkey king really think they are a person, so they led the monkeys to mob the tourists passing by, and eventually led the tourists to fall off the cliff, the situation is very bad.

In this case, the monkey king who started the trouble was killed directly, and the "tree fell and the monkeys scattered", the remaining monkeys saw that the monkey king were cold, they scattered and fled.

Since then, the scenic area of the monkeys "management" relatively strict some, and will specifically instruct visitors to pay attention to the monkeys on the mountain, do not tease them at will, and even said that after being scratched can be free vaccination. But even so, it can't stop the strife between humans and monkeys.

Because people do not provoke them, they will take the initiative to come up "robbery", whether it is carrying the bag or carrying the plastic bag, as long as they feel that there is food will grab.

It seems to be saying "this mountain is my open, this tree is my plant, to pass by here, leaving the money to buy the road", just like the bandits.

And when you protect the bag does not want to give them, these monkeys will also be hands and feet, not only to pull the tourists hair, will also be bared to the tourists teeth intimidation, is really angry.

However, the reason why humans have such conflicts with monkeys is not all on the monkeys.

First of all, some people like to "tease the dogs and cats" when they are at the bottom of the mountain, and after they get up there, they don't listen to the advice and deliberately provoke the monkeys, which eventually annoys them.

Secondly, the daily flow of visitors and the former fancy feeding behavior have changed the diet of the monkeys. We mentioned in the previous article that they are omnivores, but now they have really become "omnivores", not only eating various fruits but also snacks, and some have even learned to drink "soda".

I believe they also found out that the junk food is far more delicious than the leaves, so more monkeys are coming to grab the food, after all, who does not want to "improve the food"?

From this point of view, it is some inappropriate human behavior that makes Emei monkeys become more and more domineering, robbing tourists at every turn.

The last is their status as protected animals, under the suppression of this status, people do not dare to do anything to the monkeys, because there are any accidents but to be legally responsible.

In this case, the resourceful Emei monkeys also know this, so they will become more and more unrestrained, after all, in their view, humans are bullied more hard, more angry, but also dare not make any "excessive" behavior to them.

So if we want to change the endless human-monkey war on Emei Mountain, we must make changes to address these problems and return the relationship between humans and monkeys to normal.

Don't over-develop the monkey-watching project

Currently more restrictions in scenic areas are aimed at tourists. For example, don't show plastic bags, eat in front of the monkeys, etc. These are telling visitors to avoid the monkeys.

But in fact, the monkey does not care whether you walk around it or not, as long as you see someone will come forward to "grab things", which proves that only restrict the behavior of people is useless.

Therefore, more monkey managers should be sent to stop the monkeys from hurting people. Although we do not advocate the use of force against animals, but if the behavior is very bad, then "a small discipline" is still very necessary.

Of course, from the above analysis of the causes of the human-monkey war, we can see that it is human beings who have "planted the cause" to eventually bear such "fruit", so we should properly reduce the contact between monkeys and tourists, and return them to a natural growth environment.

Liu Shichang, an engineer from the Wildlife Protection Division of the Sichuan Forestry Department, said, "The initial intention of the scenic spot to recruit monkeys for guests is good, but this practice tends to change the habits of the monkeys and destroy their natural state of existence. Monkeys are dense beyond the normal range, which can easily lead to conflicts between monkeys and people, and even accidents that hurt people."

This shows that the Emei Mountain scenic area not only needs to further improve the services for the protection of personal property of tourists, but also to make early warning and preparedness for some unexpected events.

You can even consider setting up a barrier so that visitors do not come into direct contact with the monkeys. In this way, not only do you calm the irritable monkeys, but you also protect the safety of the tourists.

In short, the initial intention of developing the monkey-watching project is good, but in its current form, over-exploitation will instead lead to disaster. Although people and animals are "close" to each other, they should be kept at a distance for the sake of their better life.

It is worth mentioning that in fact, it is not only monkeys in Emei Mountain that repeatedly hurt people, but there are also some places where monkeys hurt people.

There are many incidents of monkeys hurting people

In Qianling Mountain Park, for example, several species of macaques they released in the last century have multiplied in a privileged environment, going from a population of less than ten to more than four hundred as of 2008. These macaques often bite or scratch visitors who come and go, and are very aggressive.

In addition, the monkeys in India are also very crazy. Not only do they take dogs kept by humans, they even prey on babies and small children, taking them away and dropping them to death.

As it turns out, monkeys are not as "nice" as we thought, sometimes they are not only violent but also particularly vindictive.

India's New Delhi TV station released a somewhat strange story in 2021: a rural town in the city of Bhide, in the central state of Maharashtra, captured two monkeys that were found to have killed nearly 250 dogs in a village in the state, possibly as "revenge" for the death of a local monkey cub by a dog.