No mousetrap? No problem.
Footage has been released of the terrifying moment of vengeful monkeys beating up and trying to drown a thieving rat for stealing food at a zoo in China. A video of their medieval approach to administering justice is currently going viral on the web.
“I do not think they were impressed by the rat stealing their food,” an anonymous cameraman told Asia Wire concerning the incident, captured in an undisclosed wildlife park in Quzhou, Zhejiang province.
The wild footage starts innocently enough, with rats running backwards and forwards between the monkey food box and the rocks in the enclosure. Things take a turn when one among the free-loading rodents is spotted trying to catch larvae and tries to hide under a food box.
Nevertheless, the smart monkeys flush out the plague-spreader, who’s promptly picked up by one among the animals. The vengeful monkey then spins the rat in the air like a sentient disc, then violently slams it to the bottom. Then one among the furry exterminators takes the stunned pest into their pool and submerges it underwater several times.
Finally, seemingly content to have drowned, Indignant George brings the waterlogged vermin back to dry land where it lies motionless.
Nevertheless, it seems that Templeton was just playing the possum. When the primate loosens his grip, the rat revives itself and descends into a hole in the rocks where the primates cannot get to it.
The witness, identified by Asia Wire as Ms. Dong, was stunned by the Code of Hammurabi-style cross-species complementarity. “I even have already seen rats and I [thought] that they didn’t hassle the monkeys and I definitely didn’t expect him to get beaten up,” she exclaimed.
It is just not yet clear whether these particular monkeys were knowingly trying to punish the rat for stealing. Nevertheless, “research has shown that chimpanzees and macaques not only seek revenge, but often achieve this intelligently – for instance, in the event that they see that their opponent is stronger than them, they are going to attack a weaker relative as an alternative.” Telegraph reported.
In a far more brutal example of monkey revenge, killer macaques in India dropped 250 dogs from treetops and buildings in 2021 as apparent revenge for killing one among their babies.
Authorities then detained two primates allegedly involved in the massacre.