NEWS: India
Accused of having massacred hundreds of puppies, two monkeys were arrested.

Lan­gur mon­keys were report­ed by vil­lagers in Lavool vil­lage, locat­ed in Maha­ras­tra’s Beed dis­trict, who saw them drag­ging pup­pies to inac­ces­si­ble heights and starv­ing them there.

One res­i­dent told the PTI news agency: “These two mon­keys come to our vil­lage. They take pup­pies with them on the roofs of hous­es or to any oth­er high place.

“At such a height, these pup­pies are not giv­en food or water. There­fore, they died nat­u­ral­ly many times. But some­times they fell and died.

Some locals believe it was an act of ‘revenge’ after dogs killed baby mon­key — although forester Amol Munde told Zee News there was no report of dogs killing a baby mon­key, and it was just a rumor start­ed by the locals.

He also took issue with the num­ber of pup­pies that are said to have died, say­ing he was only aware of three or four pup­pies that were killed in this manner.

Sachin Kand, anoth­er forestry offi­cer, con­firmed that the two mon­keys have now been captured.

“The two mon­keys are trans­ferred to Nag­pur to be released in a near­by forest.”

Speak­ing to Vice, experts explained that man­i­fes­ta­tions of aggres­sion in pri­mates — espe­cial­ly in their rela­tion­ships with humans — can be linked to a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing unin­ten­tion­al or vol­un­tary feed­ing in premis­es of near dwelling.

Mewa Singh, pro­fes­sor of ecol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mysore, told the out­let, “In the world and the ape per­cep­tion sys­tem, some­one offer­ing food is the most sub­mis­sive form of sub­or­di­na­tion. Apes are start­ing to see humans as their subordinates.

“The next time they see a per­son with food and the per­son does not offer food to the mon­keys, they are like­ly to be frus­trat­ed as if it is their right to receive that food. They are now sus­cep­ti­ble to attack.

Sumanth Bindu­mad­hav, Senior Direc­tor of Wildlife Dis­as­ter Response for Humane Soci­ety Inter­na­tion­al India, also sug­gest­ed that although ‘venge­ful’ behav­ior of pri­mates has already been report­ed in the media, we should pro­ceed with cau­tion before label­ing ani­mals of this way with­out con­clu­sive evidence.

“We often tend to asso­ciate ‘human’ feel­ings with any ani­mal. We call it “revenge,” or call them “angry” or “aggres­sive” with­out real­ly under­stand­ing the depth or ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the asso­ci­a­tion of anthro­po­mor­phic traits with ani­mals, ”Bindu­mad­hav told Vice.

He added: “What is unfair is that with­out fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion of the mat­ter, author­i­ties have gone ahead and start­ed cap­tur­ing the pri­mates involved, which is a wel­fare issue and not only aggra­vate con­flicts with primates. ”