Urban Development at the Forest Edges
As urban development continues to encroach into forest edge environments which are the habitats of the long-tailed macaques, it has brought humans and macaques in closer contact with each other (Lee & Chan, 2011).
A macaque from Lower Peirce Reservoir (just across the road) is crossing the road to get to the houses. Conflicts occur when humans feel that macaques are invading their space and feel threatened by their presence. Macaques may raid homes and bins to obtain food and their frequent use of roads puts them in danger of being involved in a car accident (Gumert, 2011). The peaks in macaque complaints received could also be associated with the numerous openings of new condominiums near nature reserves as people who just move in may not expect encounters with monkeys (Gumert, as cited in Feng, 2015b). Here’s a video by ACRES to illustrate how urban development affects macaques.
Source. ACRES SG. (2014, March 31). Understand their plight. Be their voice [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V86twhgiQzE
Human Behaviours
Food Provisioning
Feeding macaques can cause behavioural changes in macaques as they learn to associate humans with food (Gumert, 2011). This will lead them to venture further into human settlements by going into houses to search for food or sitting by the roadside to wait for food because they are increasingly reliant on humans as a source of food. The macaques may also lose their fear of humans over time and are less afraid of being in close proximity or contact with humans (Gumert, 2011). Feeding of macaques also reinforces negative behaviours that have led to macaques stealing food from people.
As seen here, the macaques at Upper Peirce Reservoir are eyeing the plastic bags because they have learnt to associate plastic bags with the presence of food. A study that observed human-macaque interactions indicated that 1/5 of the interactions that were observed involved macaques grabbing items from people and 1/9 involved macaques entering houses, bins or cars (Sha et al., 2009b). Understandably, people get upset when macaques enter their space and take things from them, thereby resulting in the human-macaque conflict. Feeding of macaques, which is a human behaviour, has to stop if we want to change the associations that macaques have regarding humans and food. Below is a video by ACRES on how feeding macaques at Mandai Road can change their behaviour negatively.
Source. Animal Concerns Research and Education Society. (2015, October 12). Effects of littering and feeding on wild macaques [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/ACRESasia/videos/vb.22159071522/10153258267836523/?type=2&theater
Provoking Monkeys
There are times when humans antagonise macaques, eliciting aggressive responses in return, thereby resulting in conflict. Throwing things at macaques, and approaching them too closely are some of the actions that are perceived as threats by the macaques (Gumert, 2010). A study done by Sha et al. (2009b) indicated that 6.3% of human-macaque interactions are due to human provocation and 20.3% were in retaliation. However, all interactions that were unprovoked were submissive and affiliative in nature, indicating that human behaviour affects the manner in which macaques interact with us.