At MacRitchie Reservoir Park, it’s lunch time and the macaques are hanging around the cafe, hoping to get some food. This of course, is not welcomed by all. Sometimes, they steal food from people, and at other times, people throw things at them (bottles, cups, empty food packaging, etc.). When too many of them gather, workers at the cafe chase them off by spraying them with water.
MacRitchie Reservoir Park is one of the many places in Singapore whereby humans and macaques are in very close proximity to one another. Here are some videos to illustrate this.
People may be interested when they see a wild macaque roaming around and decide to go up close to it to take a picture. And by up close, I mean right in front of the monkey. This was something that I saw a lot while at MacRitchie Reservoir Park. While driving up Old Thomson Road to Upper Peirce Reservoir, I also witnessed a man squatting really close a baby macaque to take a picture of it with his camera. Fortunately, all the interactions that I witnessed ended peacefully. However, this may not always be the case as seen by the numerous media reports on ‘nuisance’ monkeys. Here are some opinions obtained from Yeo and Neo’s (2010) interviews with residents experiencing macaque problems.
“They [macaques] should stay as a group within the reserve . . . It is nuisance when they enter our compound to scavenge and leave footprints or feces on the car and walls.”
“Plucking fruits from trees is normal monkey behavior, but boldly entering houses to steal food and reacting aggressively are abnormal behaviors.“
Now that you have a rough idea of the various interactions that humans have with macaques, let us examine the reasons behind the human-macaque conflict.