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SANGEH, Indonesia (AP) – deprived of your favorite source of food – bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought by tourists are now kept away from the coronavirus – hungry monkeys on the holiday island of Bali have searched the homes of villagers in their search for something tasty.
Villagers in Sangeh say the gray long-tailed macaques ventured out of a sanctuary 500 meters away to hang out on their rooftops, waiting for the right time to grab a snack.
Concerned that the sporadic operations could escalate into a total monkey attack on the village, the residents brought fruit, peanuts and other food to the monkey forest of Sangeh to try to appease the primates.
“We are afraid that the hungry monkeys will become wild and vicious,” said the villager Saskara Gustu Alit.
About 600 of the macaques live in the forest reserve, swing from the tall nutmeg trees and jump over the famous Pura Bukit Sari temple and are considered sacred.
In normal times, the protected jungle area in the southeast of the Indonesian island is popular with both locals for wedding photos and international visitors. The relatively tame monkeys can easily be made to sit on one shoulder or lap for a peanut or two.
Typically, tourism is the main source of income for Bali’s 4 million residents, who welcomed more than 5 million foreign visitors annually prior to the pandemic.
The Sangeh Monkey Forest typically had around 6,000 visitors a month, but as the pandemic spread over the past year and international travel decreased dramatically, that number dropped to around 500.
Since Indonesia banned all foreign travelers to the island in July and also closed the sanctuary to local residents, there has been no one left.
Not only has that resulted in no one bringing extra food for the monkeys, but the sanctuary has lost its entrance fees and has run out of money to buy food for them, operations manager Made Mohon said.
The donations from the villagers have helped, but they are also feeling the economic hardship and are gradually giving less, he said.
“This ongoing pandemic is beyond our expectations,” said Made Mohon, “food for monkeys has become a problem.”
Food costs are around 850,000 rupiah ($ 60) a day for 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cassava, the monkey’s staple food, and 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of bananas, according to Made Mohon.
The macaque is omnivorous and can eat a variety of animals and plants found in the jungle, but those in the Sangeh Monkey Forest have had enough contact with humans over the years that they seem to prefer other things.
And they are not afraid to take matters into their own hands, said Gustu Alit.
Often monkeys wander into the village and sit on roofs, occasionally removing tiles and dropping them to the ground. When the villagers make religious food offerings on their terraces every day, the monkeys jump down and run away with them.
“A few days ago I attended a traditional ceremony in a temple near the Sangeh Forest,” said Gustu Alit. “When I parked my car and took out two plastic bags with food and flowers as offerings, two monkeys suddenly appeared, packed everything and ran very quickly into the forest.”
Usually the monkeys spend all day interacting with visitors – stealing sunglasses and water bottles, pulling on clothes, jumping on shoulders – and Gustu Alit theorizes that they’re bored not just hungry.
“That’s why I pushed the villagers here to come into the forest, play with the monkeys and offer them food,” he said. “I think they need to interact with people as often as possible so they don’t go wild.”
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Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associate press writer David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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