wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  Business Times 25 May 07
Monkeys are a lot more elitist
By Jaime Ee

THERE are two things going on right now in Singapore that I don't understand. One, people are avidly speaking out against elitism in schools, yet parents will stop at nothing to secure places for their kids at 'elite' primary schools: they buy homes near the school of their choice, submit resumes (theirs) and Mensa reports (their kids'), offer thousands of dollars in donations and even volunteer to be traffic wardens or run the school's entire IT operations.

And the second thing I don't understand is? Why people like to feed monkeys. Being the anthropological sort that I am, I thought it would be good to see if there was some kind of explanation for such behaviour.

But I didn't really know how to go about it.

After all, working mothers can get pretty testy if you interrupt them during traffic warden duty - especially if it delays them from chalking up the precious number of hours they need. Don't traipse around the school gardens willy-nilly either - some parent may have just weeded it.

And just in case you didn't know, it is not a very good idea to confront people feeding monkeys, particularly when they are in possession of soft mushy fruit with good airspeed velocity.

So I decided to study monkeys instead, and eureka, I got it.

We may not realise it, but monkeys are a lot more elitist, and more Singaporean, than we think.

How did I come to this astounding comparison? Simple. I looked in my own backyard. Specifically, at this one mon key that has a presumptuous way of clim bing my papaya tree and eating the ripest ones that I can't reach with my bamboo pole.

When I use the same pole in an attempt to push him off the lofty perch, he has the gall to snarl at me and throw a wad of pulp - with seeds - in my face. It's the exact same attitude as the motorist who cuts crazily into your lane and when you drive up beside him to give him that 'you moron' look, he gives you that same snarl - albeit without the papaya pulp.

There are other similarities, too. In the same way that parents buy homes within 1 km of their target school, Singapore monkeys also don't like to live too far away from their food source of choice.

You will not find a monkey living in Ang Mo Kio, commuting every day to the nature reserve at Upper Thomson Road. Not only that, lower-rank monkeys have to fight for limited spaces in the trees by foraging for food to bring back to their seniors who will only then allow them a decent spot in the trees. As a result, these monkeys end up fighting with each other for choice spots in the neighbourhood, zeroing in on homes with choice fruit trees and vegetable patches, edging out their hapless counterparts who have to settle for less tasty berries on roadside palm trees.

Still doesn't sound familiar?

Then how about when they gather in noisy groups on the street and you can't walk past in case they decide to snatch your handphone and assault you? And how about the way they always grab the best bits of food for themselves, and throw the remnants on the ground for you to clean up?

So maybe I'll never truly understand why Singaporeans do what they do, and why they think feeding monkeys is cute.

Maybe they see something in the monkeys that the park rangers don't? Like, you know, themselves?
links
Please don't feed the monkeys more about the impact of feeding and list of media articles on this issue.

When feeding monkeys = loving them to death
By Yap Su-Yin Straits Times 21 May 07

Related articles on Exotic Species and pets
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com