Monkeys Can't Stop Eating India's Delicious Fiber Optic Cables

By Ashley Feinberg

(Gizmodo)  Right now, India’s in the middle of launching a massive, $18 billion plan to finally bring the country’s shoddy internet up to speed. There’s just one little problem: Adorable monkeys just can’t stop eating its delicious, delicious data cables.

Specifically, its the 3,000 year-old holy city of Varanasi that’s having the hardest time getting an internet overhaul, since its many temples are home to hordes of (presumably) hungry, tech-hating macaque monkeys. And since the monkeys are seen as sacred, chasing them away is apparently out of the question. As a communications engineer for the project told Reuters:

We cannot move the temples from here. We cannot modify anything here, everything is built up. The monkeys, they destroy all the wires and eat all the wires.

The team even had to replace some of the wires less than two-months after they were installed because those goddamn monkeys couldn’t help themselves.

While the engineers are currently looking for alternative, prospects are bleak. According to Reuters, “The city of over 2 million people is impossibly crowded and laying underground cable is out of the question.”

Another option? Stop making such delicious cables. [Reuters]
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• Monkeys Can't Stop Eating India's Delicious Fiber Optic Cables

Delhi’s 30,000 unruly monkeys steal stuff, terrorize people and even kill

By James Tapper

(GlobalPost) NEW DELHI, India — Madi is a bully. He has three-inch canines that glisten when he snarls.

And that’s a good thing, says his owner, Niraj.

Madi is a langur — a large, grey monkey with a black face and ears, endemic to South Asia.

Big and menacing, he’s able to scare off this city’s 30,000 smaller, red-faced rhesus monkeys, to protect the local human population from their naughty and dangerous antics.

Niraj earns his living hauling Madi around India’s capital on his bicycle to scare away monkeys that hang around parks, rob offices (really) and terrorize people.

It’s hard to over-emphasize this point: India’s rhesus monkeys are derelicts. They regularly steal food, alcohol, glasses, medical equipment, and clothes. They even break into cars... (continued)

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• Delhi’s 30,000 unruly monkeys steal stuff, terrorize people and even kill

Monkeys Riding Dogs and Herding Goats

Rogue monkey finally caught in Florida

By Miles Doran

(CBS News) ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. The monkey that has evaded Florida wildlife officials for more than three years has been caught.

Wildlife officials nabbed the monkey Wednesday afternoon after a five-hour stakeout near a wooded area in a south St. Petersburg neighborhood.

"We concealed ourselves in the area," said Baryl Martin, spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, "and we waited for the monkey to approach."

Then the monkey was shot with a tranquilizer dart.

Martin, along with wildlife trapper Vernon Yates and a veterinarian, waited for the effects of the tranquilizer to set in. But the monkey made a run for it.

"When we got closer it tried to evade us," Martin said. "We chased it about 50 to 100 yards."

The trio briefly chased the monkey through the woods before Yates grabbed it with his hand and a catch pole.
"He settled down quite a bit after we got our hands on him," Martin said.

The monkey was placed in a cage and taken to an area veterinarian's office for evaluation and testing.

The Rhesus Macaque achieved notoriety in the Tampa Bay area after repeatedly managing to elude wildlife officials since 2009. The chase, which spanned at least three counties, has been chronicled by local and national media.

About a year ago, the monkey seemed to find a new home in a wooded area in south St. Petersburg where protective neighbors fed him bananas and refused to give up his location to authorities.

Attempts to capture the monkey were escalated two weeks ago after the monkey scratched and bit a resident of the neighborhood. Traps with bananas were set, but the monkey managed to steal the bananas without getting caught.

"In some ways I'll give him credit," Yates told CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman last week. "He knows not to get up into power lines. He'll run to a road, he stops and looks both ways for traffic before he runs across it. This is one of the most intelligent monkeys that I think I have ever seen."

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• Rogue monkey finally caught in Florida

Can a Monkey Save NBC?

(New York Magazine) On July 24, at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, the cast of the new NBC sitcom Animal Practice were finishing up a panel presentation for the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour when a siren pierced the auditorium. From the wings, a miniature, remotely controlled ambulance raced onto the dais; perched atop it was a small monkey wearing blue surgeon’s scrubs and holding a card emblazoned with the peacock logo. Hovering conspicuously in the background at the event was NBC’s perennial fourth-place ranking in prime time, and the symbolism of an ambulance-riding capuchin—can a ­monkey save NBC?—was barely latent. But this wasn’t any old monkey.

At 18, Crystal has an IMDb page longer and, though it’s curiously incomplete, more hit-studded than most actors three times her age. You may have seen her in American Pie, 3:10 to Yuma, Dr. Dolittle, Zookeeper, or We Bought a Zoo. “We feel this is Crystal’s breakthrough performance,” said Zoo director Cameron Crowe. “It is her Carnal Knowledge. The role brings out colors we have yet to see...”

NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke has told advertisers that Crystal is the highest-testing character on any of the network’s new slate of shows. But the capuchin’s fame has already spread well beyond ­focus-group screening rooms. On a plane back to L.A., a passenger turned iPhone paparazzo took a snapshot of Crystal belted into her business-class seat on American Airlines, a full human meal in front of her. (Celebrity monkeys: They’re just like us.) At LAX, TMZ filmed her as she rode on Gunderson’s shoulder out of baggage claim...

Crystal reportedly earns $12,000 per episode of Animal Practice, and she is a presence in every one, whether cheering on an illicit turtle race (a guinea pig riding on each turtle’s back) or crawling inside and animating a puppet to haunt a ­puppet-phobe. When I meet her in the Astroturf atrium, Crystal, wearing spangled denim board shorts that conceal a diaper, shakes my hand with a miniature paw. She is standing on the lap of her trainer and moving from one of his knees to the other, over and over, while making occasional high-pitched tee-tee-tee sounds. She seems anxious, but Gunderson says she’s probably just bored.

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Monkeys Treated for Depression in Argentina

(Fox News Latino) Black howler monkeys at an Argentine ecological park have been suffering depression following the death of two of the oldest females in the group and had to be given medication because they refused to eat, the press reported.

Two alpha females died 1 1/2 years ago from natural causes at the Rio Cuarto Urban Ecological Park some 650 kilometers (400 miles) west of Buenos Aires, and from that moment "their male companions began suffering depression and four let themselves die of sadness," park director Miriam Rodriguez told Clarin newspaper.

The black howler monkeys in this 12-hectare (30-acre) park "live in a group and are very close to one another," Rodriguez said. "When the females died, we noticed the others behaving oddly, but we thought it might have been something they ate."

Concerned about their lethargy and refusal to eat, park officials consulted specialists at the nearby Cordoba Zoo, who told them "the animals could be going through a phase of acute depression," Rodriguez said.
After several analyses, psychiatrist Sergio Castillo confirmed the diagnosis of depression and two months ago prescribed a treatment based on sertraline, "a mineral derived from the serotonin used in humans to reverse different symptoms originating from compulsive disorders or depression," veterinarian Ezequiel Carrizo told the newspaper.

There was initially some resistance to the treatment since it seemed "ridiculous to give them anti-depression medication even if it was only a minimum dose," Rodriguez told Radio 2, adding that "it has begun to raise the monkeys' spirits."

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• Monkeys Treated for Depression in Argentina

The 10 weirdest new species of 2012

A mushroom named after SpongeBob, a sneezing monkey, and a blue tarantula top this year's list of Earth's most bizarre residents

(The Week) Rainy days are downers for the newly discovered Rhinopithecus strykeri monkeys, who start sneezing at the slightest drizzle. 

It's estimated that Earth is home to at least 8 million living species, and every year scientists add 15,000 to 20,000 new discoveries to that tally. But thousands of species are threatened with extinction, too, thanks to habitat destruction, climate change, and other factors. For the past five years, in an effort to bring attention to the biodiversity crisis, the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at Arizona State University has worked in conjunction with biologists worldwide to cobble together the newly added animals and plants they find most interesting. More than 200 organisms were nominated, but only a few were selected. In no particular order, here are this year's 10 strangest additions to the world's living things:

1. The SpongeBob SquarePants mushroom

The Malaysian mushroom that "lives in the rain forest, under a tree" is nearly as strange as its Nickelodeon namesake, says Wynne Parry at LiveScience. The resilient fungus, known scientifically as Spongiforma squarepantsii, can be squeezed and wrung, but still returns to its original form.


Photo: Thomas Bruns

2. A monkey that sneezes when it rains

This strange-looking monkey has black fur and a white beard, with a stubby, upturned nose that causes it to sneeze whenever it's raining. "To avoid inhaling water, the monkeys supposedly sit with their heads tucked between their knees on drizzly days," says LiveScience's Parry.

Photo: Thomas Geissmann/Fauna & Flora International

3. A walking cactus

At first glance, the newly discovered but long-extinct organism looks like a small, two-inch cactus. But Diania cactiformis is actually a worm-like arthropod with a hard exoskeleton and multiple legs, and may even be an ancient ancestor of modern spiders and crustaceans.

Photo: Jianni Liu

4. The Devil's worm

These tiny 0.02-inch long worms were discovered nearly a mile inside a South African gold mine — the deepest a multi-cellular organism has ever been found, says Thomas H. Maugh II at the Los Angeles Times. "It was named Halicephalobus mephisto from the Faust legend because it survives at high pressures and temperatures."

Photo: A.G. Borgonie, Ghent University, Belgium; Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image, face view of H. mephisto

5. An orchid that only blooms at night

In Papua New Guinea, a rare orchid named Bulbophyllum nocturnum opens up around 10 p.m. and closes early the next morning. As far as experts know, it's the only nocturnally blooming orchid.

Photo: Andre Schuiteman

6. A parasitic, egg-laying wasp

This tiny Spanish parasite, Kollosmosoma sentum, is constantly on the prowl for ants. In a blink-of-the-eye sting that lasts just 1/20th of a second, the wasp is actually laying eggs into the ants' abdomen. (Watch a video here.)

Photo: C. van Achterberg 

7. A blue tarantula

What's furry, has eight legs, and is blue all over? This "breathtakingly beautiful" iridescent tarantula from Brazil — the first creature from the country to ever make the list.

Photo: Rogério Bertani/ Instituto Butantan

8. A high-altitude poppy

The rare flower named Meconopsis autumnalis looks like an ordinary yellow poppy. So what makes it special? The flower only grows in the thin-aired mountains of Nepal, well over 10,000 feet above sea level.

Photo: Paul Egan

9. A meaty millipede 

The Crurifarcimen vaganas from Tanzania is 6.3 inches long and boasts 56 pairs of legs, making it the world's largest millipede. Researchers have dubbed it the "wandering leg sausage" thanks to its uncanny resemblance to the tubular meat product.

Photo: Brovad

10. A kite-like jellyfish

This "strikingly beautiful but venomous box jelly" was first sighted in 2001, but has become increasingly prevalent around the globe. Over 300 entries were submitted in an online competition to name the translucent species before the name Tamoya ohboya was officially selected. Presumably, the name was inspired by the yelps ("Oh boy!") uttered by victims of the jellyfish's sting.

Photo: Ned Deloach

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• The 10 weirdest new species of 2012

Bar Raiding Cocktail-Loving Caribbean Monkeys

By Ted Thornhill

(The Daily Mail) Monkeys may be closer to humans than we previously thought – because they even ape our drinking habits.

There are gangs of vervet monkeys on the Caribbean Island of St Kitts that regularly raid the local beach bars for cocktails to satisfy their thirst - and they can be seen getting their paws on them in a hilarious YouTube video.

The cheeky boozers first arrived on the island 300 years ago with slaves from West Africa who were shipped there to work in the rum industry.

Thirst for fancy drinks: This vervet monkey cheekily sips a tourists' cocktail

Shipped in: The boozing monkeys first arrived on the island 300 years ago

They developed a taste for alcohol from eating fermented fruits on forest floors – and have now been filmed for the BBC’s Weird Science show moving on to stealing beachgoers’ fancy tipples.

However, not all of them like alcohol.

The show discovered that their drinking habits match that of human populations.

The voiceover explained: ‘Some monkeys are teetotal and reject alcohol in favour of soft drinks.

This monkey was caught enjoying a cocktail - but some are teetotal

Thieves: The monkeys regularly steal drinks as beachgoers sunbathe

‘The percentage of teetotal monkeys matches the non-drinkers in the human population.

‘In line with human habits, most drink in moderation, 12 per cent are steady drinkers and five per cent drink to the last drop.

‘It shows that our liking for alcohol is determined largely by our genes.’

Just like humans, the monkeys that have been drinking end the day by falling over a lot and getting involved in scuffles.

But unlike humans, the monkeys that drink are respected by those that don’t.

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Kazakh zoo feeds red wine to monkeys

A zoologist in central Kazakhstan has confirmed what many people already suspected. Red wine is good for you. 

Red wine is medicinal says a zoologists in Kazakhstan who feeds it to her monkeys

By James Kilner, Almaty

(The Telegraph) It’s so good for you, in fact, that Svetlana Pilyuk, the chief animal specialist at Karaganda zoo in central Kazakhstan, feeds red wine to her monkeys to ward off winter colds.

"We give the monkeys wine because in the winter it protects them from respiratory infections," the AFP news agency quoted Ms Pilyuk as saying.

“You could say we douse them with wine to ward off flu.”

Karaganda lies in the middle of the vast Kazakh steppe and in winter it is one of the coldest places on earth with temperatures regularly hitting - 22F (- 30C). The monkeys, though, live inside where the temperature is closer to 80F (27C).

But not all the monkeys are allowed a daily ration of wine. Pregnant and baby monkeys are barred from wine, Ms Pilyuk said.

Still, most of the monkeys apparently appreciate their daily tot of red wine which Ms Pilyuk prepares by adding fruit, sugar and hot water.

"After all, primates are just like people. They enjoy drinking an alcoholic drink, they like it. Some of them even abuse it, coming up to the drinking trough several times," she said.

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High drama as monkeys wed in India

Rajesh, a 38-year-old auto rickshaw driver, shares a cigarette with his monkey Raju at Banetha village, in the north-western state of Rajasthan. PHOTO: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters 

(Reuters Life) TALWAS: The tale, set in the forests of northwestern India, had all the ingredients of a perfect Bollywood love story: emotion, celebration, star-crossed lovers and a nail-biting climax.

The only difference was that the lovers were monkeys, taking part in India’s first simian wedding – with the whole unfolding drama a classic clash between age-old village belief and the demands of modern life skeptical of that way of thought.

Hindu belief includes worship of animals as avatars of the gods. Monkeys have an especially significant role in Hindu mythology where they are worshipped as avatars of Hanuman, the mighty ape that aided Rama in his fight against evil.

So when plans for the wedding of “Raju” and “Chinki” were laid in the small village of Talwas, deep in the forests of Rajasthan, villagers responded with excitement.

Raju, the “groom,” was famous in Banetha village, about 55 km from Talwas, attracting crowds whenever he went outside. He was known for eating, sleeping and smoking cigarettes with his owner, Ramesh Saini, who treated him like a son.

“I want to enjoy the feelings of a son’s marriage through Raju’s wedding,” said Rajesh, a 38-year-old married but childless auto rickshaw driver who nursed Raju back to health after finding him unconscious three years ago.
So he was overjoyed two months ago when he met Chinki’s caretaker, a priest in a nearby village, who proposed that the two monkeys be married.

“We will welcome the bride in our house in Banetha after the wedding with all rituals,” said an excited Ramesh while offering tea to Raju at a roadside tea shop.

Hundreds of invitation cards were sent out to nearby villages for the wedding, planned according to traditional Hindu customs that include seven rounds of the sacred fire as the wedding vows are recited by a priest. A huge pre-wedding feast was planned, along with a procession with Raju on a horse.

But no good love story is complete without a little hiccup.

As news of the marriage spread, the state forest department officials stepped into action. Since monkeys are protected in India as government property, no one can pet them, train them or – as in this case – marry them, even to a fellow monkey.

“It’s illegal to marry a monkey. Anyone found doing that or attending the marriage ceremony will be arrested,” said forest range officer Bhavar Singh Kaviya.

Tensions rose in both villages after officials issued their final warning. The monkeys and their owners went into hiding.

On the day of the planned wedding, more than 200 guards poured into Talwas, where they confronted hundreds of people from nearby villages who had arrived to see the rare spectacle.

“I have come all the way just to watch god’s marriage and now the police are telling me to go back and stay away from the temple,” said Prem Jain, an angry 72-year-old villager, after arguing with a policeman.
“They told me the monkeys have been captured. They can’t capture god!”

But then came the news – the monkey couple had been secretly married off in a ceremony somewhere deep in the forest. The villagers erupted in joy and began celebrating.

The officials couldn’t resist congratulating Chinki and posed for pictures with her.

Both monkeys were captured and officials said they hoped to release them soon in nearby forests, but Ramesh was confident of their eventual return. “I know my son Raju, with his wife Chinki, will come back home,” said an emotional Ramesh. “I will hold a big reception for them!”

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Rare Redbearded Monkeys Found Living in Colombia

But Researchers Say Habitat Destruction Threatens Survival of Caqueta Titi Monkey

(Discover)  The good news: After decades of wondering whether this immaculately bearded monkey really existed, but not being able to confirm it because of never-ending violence in Colombia, scientists say they’ve finally found evidence of the Caqueta titi monkey. The bad news: Because of habitat destruction, the cat-sized redbeard primate is critically endangered.

The new species joins about 20 other titi monkeys known in the Amazon basin. They appear to be monogamous to a level that puts humans to shame, says expedition leader Thomas Defler, whose study (pdf) appears in Primate Conservation. The Caqueta monkey couples have about one child per year that they raise together, and that isn’t the end of their absurd adorableness.

"All of the babies purr like cats too," Defler added. "When they feel very content they purr towards each other, and the ones we raised would purr to us."

Defler got to make the trip to Colombia’s Caqueta region because violence in the area had lessened by 2008, and because he met Javier Garcia, who is from there.

Garcia hopes to keep studying the monkeys for his master’s degree work-and to argue for new nature preserves to protect them and other endangered species.

It is estimated that less than 250 Caquetá titi monkeys exist - a healthy population should be in the thousands. The main reason for this small number is the degradation of the forests in the area, which have been felled for agricultural land. It is very dangerous, and sometimes impossible, for these animals to move to other patches of forest as they have to cross grassy savannah or barbed wire fences to reach them.

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Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay evades capture for a year

A fugitive rhesus monkey which looks both ways before crossing a road has become an unlikely local hero in Florida after resisting determined attempts to capture it for a year.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 6:39PM GMT 24 Mar 2010

The so-called Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay has managed to rise above the jumble of exotic animals, including pythons and big cats, usually on the loose in the state, earning its own Facebook page with more than 24,000 fans.

The creature, native to southern Asia, has been shot several times with tranquiliser darts and has proved equally elusive in urban areas as in dense woodland. Seemingly unfazed by humans, it has been spotted several times relaxing beside people's swimming pools.

Officials are not sure where the monkey came from, but a popular theory is that it became separated from a troop of wild monkeys in a state park around 118 miles north of its current stalking ground. The troop is descended from animals originally imported to star in early Tarzan films.

"He is an extremely intelligent monkey. He is very, very streetwise," said Vernon Yates, a wildlife trapper who said he had pursued the monkey across three counties.

"He knows to check traffic. He knows to look both ways so he doesn't get hit by cars. He knows to stay out of power lines," he said.

Mr Yates claimed to have hit the animal with tranquilliser darts at least twice. On one occasion, the monkey displayed its contempt for the attack by flinging faeces at the hunter before climbing higher into a tree to sleep off the effects of the dart.

Wildlife officials have warned that the fugitive should not be underestimated.

"That animal is so much quicker and more powerful than people perceived. People have no idea how fierce their bites would be," said Gary Morse of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

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An 8-year-old male macaque Tasik drinks Cahors wine in the Royev Ruchey zoo in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, November 6, 2009. A zoo keeper gave red wine to the monkeys because he believes it is a preventative measure against the H1N1 flu disease. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin (RUSSIA ENVIRONMENT HEALTH IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Yousef the monkey checks out of zoo – and swings by hotel

By CLAIRE GARDNER

PERHAPS he had been hoping his final destination would be a land flowing with nuts and bananas.

So being tranquillised on the rooftop of an Edinburgh hotel was probably not the ending this escapee monkey was hoping for when he made his break for freedom...

Not content with scaling an electric fence and exploring the zoo grounds, the four-year-old male decided to indulge in a bit of monkey business.

Leaping from lamppost to lamppost, the monkey, whose breed experts say poses no threat to the public, also negotiated Saturday morning traffic along busy Corstorphine Road...

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NASA to start irradiating monkeys

Tests aim to see how radioactive environment of space impacts humans

By Irene Klotz

NASA is stepping up its space radiation studies with a round of experiments that for the first time in decades will use monkeys as subjects.

The point of the experiments is to understand how the harsh radioactive environment of space affects human bodies and behavior and what countermeasures can be developed to make long-duration spaceflight safe for travelers beyond Earth's protective magnetic shield.

For the new study, 18 to 28 squirrel monkeys will be exposed to a low dose of the type of radiation that astronauts traveling to Mars can expect to encounter...

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Letterman Attacked by Monkeys

In this August 2009 handout photograph provided by The Denver Zoo, one of the emperor tamarin monkey twins is groomed with a toothbrush by a handler. The tamarin twins named Lara and Lucy were orphaned on July 30 when their mother died of cancer, three weeks after giving birth. As a result, zookeepers are feeding the monkeys by hand. (AP Photo/HO, The Denver Zoo, Dave Parsons)

Alcoholic Vervet Monkeys! - Weird Nature - BBC animals

Store owner: Monkey caught on tape burglarizing business

NBC -- It's a crime caught on camera that has the owners of a north Texas business going bananas.

They have security camera video of what appears to be a monkey burglarizing their business.

Ellen Goldberg has more on the bizarre break-in.

"Definitely never been robbed by a monkey before," says store co-owner Jerry Duncan.

Yes, a primate is the prime suspect in the latest break-in at this Richardson, Texas nursery.

"I said no way until I look at it and said this is crazy," said store co-owner Shelley Rosenfeld.

The owners of "Plants and Planters" are convinced that's a monkey in the bottom left hand corner of the security camera tape.

"You can see the back legs the front arms and the white head," observes Duncan.

And with the help of a human accomplice, Shelley Rosenfeld believes the monkey was trained to steal several hundred dollars worth of her merchandise.

"He went out in this section out here and handed plants over the gate," she days.

About 40 plants were missing the next morning. There were also pieces of concrete shattered in the parking lot.

"They need to train him better if he is going to do the big jobs," Duncan adds with a laugh.

For now, Richardson police are stuck with the job of figuring out who or what this is.

"I wouldn't think there would be too many monkeys in this city," Duncan says.

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