Photo by Raffles Museum
Most of us would have known about the human-macaque conflict in Singapore via media reports. Click here to take a look at some of the articles on this topic.
When media reports regarding human-macaque conflict from 2004 to 2008 in Singapore were analysed, 42.6% of the articles had negative connotations of macaques, 44.7% were neutral and only 12.7% were positive (Sha et al., 2009b).
The Singapore media has a lot of coverage on the human-macaque conflict and its negative portrayal of the it can affect the impressions that people form about macaques. There are rare cases whereby macaques attack humans, but half of the time, human-macaque interactions were either affiliative or submissive. Also, Singapore may have one of the most peaceful human-macaque interfaces in the world and thus, the human-macaque conflict is probably less severe than what is depicted in the media (Sha et al., 2009b).