Forty-two people have been injured by wandering macaques in the western Japanese city of Yamaguchi since early July, with attacks on an unusually large scale forcing local authorities to use stun guns to calm them down.
Macaques are widespread in the Japanese archipelago, where they are sometimes perceived as a nuisance, sniffing around houses or raiding crops.
But it is rare for these little monkeys to directly attack humans. In Yamaguchi, both children and adults have been attacked, scratched or bitten in recent weeks.
“The entire city of Yamaguchi is surrounded by mountains, so it’s not uncommon to find monkeys there,” a city official said Monday.
Children, women, the elderly…
“But it’s rare to see so many attacks in such a short time,” he agreed. “Initially, only children and women were targeted. But recently, the elderly and adult men have also been targeted.”
Local authorities have been conducting patrols since the first attacks around July 8, but have so far failed to capture any macaques. They do not know if it is a particularly aggressive isolated group or a behavior that has become widespread among these primates.
These incidents made headlines in the Japanese media, profusely citing the Yamaguchi residents who were victims. “I heard crying on the ground floor, so I ran there. And there I saw a monkey that had climbed on my son,” a father recently confided to the newspaper. mainichi.
Source: BFM TV
