When you think of Japanese macaques, aka snow monkeys, you probably see cute chillin’ monkeys living a life of leisure, playing in the snow and soaking in hot springs. But you may also wonder, how do they afford this lavish lifestyle? Well, according to reports, one monkey gang has been on a month-long crime spree. But why? Inflation hitting banana prices? Rising hot tub heating costs? While we can only speculate, we do know their crimes have escalated to a boiling point in the Japanese city of Yamaguchi.
Snow monkeys’ criminal activity usually is a little petty theft, grabbing food, or eating crops. But this gang of monkeys has taken it too far and have injured around 50 people in the past month. As per The Guaridan, first women and children were reported attack victims. There were even cases of monkeys trying to drag small kids away! Then they got even more brazen, attacking the elderly and adult men. Luckily the injuries have all been minor with scratches and bites. But it’s still a scary situation for the local residents, with monkey’s reportedly sneaking into homes and schools through windows and sneak-attacking from behind.
To combat this, a special team is now patrolling with tranquillizer guns and nets to catch and remove aggressive monkeys. While the monkey terror hangs over the city, officials aren’t fully sure how many monkeys are involved, due to the variety of descriptions and sizes of the attacking monkeys from victims.
“…but whether a monkey is small or big changes from person to person as it depends on their perception,” “Of course, we could work it out if there were a line-up of monkeys, but in this case, we can’t say for sure if there are one, two, or several monkeys.”
– Masato Saito, city hall official, told CNN
Macaque attacks in Yamaguchi on the news this morning pic.twitter.com/NxXgcfNyPW
— Japan Trail Cam (@japantrailcam) July 24, 2022
Until we get to see the lineup of snow monkey suspects, you can check out: Gang of monkeys terrorize tourists in Indonesia.