Macaques in the Garbage

You've heard of "Gorillas in the Mist"? Today I bring you the Malaysian version, "Macaques in the Garbage".

I have been busy today, teaching five classes, and setting up a new Blog for my 2S class, since the work my 2K class is doing is going so well. That means I don't have any time for a new posting today, so instead, here are some pictures of a couple of Macaques, doing what they are fond of doing at our school. Namely, raiding the garbage cans for food scraps.

I found out, from no less an authority than the National Geographic Channel, that in Macaque society it's the females that rule. The females stay with the maternal group their whole life. When a male gets to a certain age, it is kicked out of the group, and has to fend for himself. That means you have a lot of juvenile male monkeys roaming around looking for trouble, and finding it.

They can be pretty bold, like these guys, who didn't even blink when I approached them. They were having too much of a good time throwing garbage around to even care. Plus there were some really yummy semi-rancid sugary snack scraps that would give them the sugar rush they needed. There was even enough that they didn't have to fight over them. Just pull up a can, dump it all over the floor, throw the trash around, and dig in!

Even though I consider myself an environmentalist, I will save you any of the anthropomorphic tree hugging Dian Fossey kind of stuff.

I don't have time!