Monkeys have become a menace on farms in northern India, eating potato and strawberry crops and even entering homes and ransacking fridges.
Farmers in Sambhal district, Uttar Pradesh, have become so desperate that they have resorted to dressing up as bears and growling at them to protect their crops.
Previous attempts at scaring the monkeys away — running after them with brooms, banging drums and pans, and installing scarecrows — proved to be inefficient. Complaints to local wildlife officials also failed to elicit a solution.
The new costumes in action
ANI NEWS
Eventually, the farmers decided to try something else. Knowing that monkeys are terrified of bears, they bought bear costumes.
At the sight of the fake bears, the monkeys — sometimes almost 100 strong — ran for their lives and kept away, at least for a while.
Similar methods have been tried in cities across north India, where monkeys have become so accustomed to foraging for food in populated areas that they enter homes and eat whatever they find.
“They smashed our water pipes, broke the water tank on the roof, and smashed our pot plants. When I waved a stick at them, they snarled back,” said Ratna Aggarwal, who lives in New Friends Colony in South Delhi.
• Delhi hopes 2D cutouts will stop cheeky monkeys ruining G20 summit
In areas of the capital where ministers and MPs live, monkeys are such a problem that men are sometimes hired to wear langur costumes to impersonate the larger, black-faced monkeys that terrify rhesus monkeys.
Real langurs were used to chase away rhesus monkeys for decades, but in 2012 India began enforcing a neglected wildlife law that prohibits keeping langurs in captivity.
But the “monkey men”, like the farmers in bear costumes, are not a permanent solution because they fail to address the two causes of the problem. Firstly, Hindus feed monkeys because they revere Hanuman, the monkey god, who is believed to bring good luck.
Secondly, human development has encroached on the forest lands traditionally used by monkeys to find food.
Monkeys are not the only species posing a problem to farmers as stray cows also eat their crops.
The bear costume strategy is unlikely to be a permanent solution
ANI NEWS
Given that cow slaughter is banned in most Indian states, cattle owners can no longer sell their cows to the slaughterhouse. Instead, when cows become unproductive, they let them loose and the hungry animals seek food on others’ farmland.
Munidev Tyagi, a farmer in Sahibpur village in Uttar Pradesh, spends much of the night awake to keep cows away. “Sometimes there are so many cows, I can’t cope on my own and my wife and children have to join me,” he said.