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Showing posts from April, 2008

JUST SPANK THE MONKEY, DON'T KILL IT

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Can monkeys form gangs and terrorize people? Just ask the residents of Gibraltar where a pack of 25 macaques have broken into hotels through open windows, vandalized rooms, and have been seen rummaging through garbage in the center of town. When I first read about this, I thought Judd Apatow was shooting a movie on the big rock and that the monkeys—teenagers no doubt—were “extras.” The more than 200 macaques on the island are a major tourist attraction in Gibraltar, but they also carry diseases like salmonella and herpes B-virus , which can be transmitted to humans, especially if the monkey bites you. You can imagine what happens when tourists see these free-range monkeys. They feed them (duh)! And like most animals with any brains, the monkeys figure that the tourists have more where that came from. So they hit the hotels. Even though the tourists are to blame for the monkey’s sins, Gibraltar blames the victims. They intend to kill all 25 in the gang. This has prompted an equally stro