The moment an Australian dad frantically scooped up his son as aggressive monkeys attacked him on a beach in Thailand has been captured on video.
Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, who amassed 1.8 million YouTube subscribers with their travel content, visited Monkey Beach on Ko Phi Phi Don with their two young sons.
Whitelum and his sons, 5-year-old Lenny and 1-year-old Darwin, were watching the monkeys on the beach when one of them began looking in their bag.
The 38-year-old ran towards the monkey to scare it away from the family’s possessions, however the monkey lunged forward.
Then he lunged at Darwin.
Whitelum grabbed the screaming child in his arms as more indignant monkeys approached.
He ran to get a bag left on the beach, but a group of five monkeys surrounded him.
Carausu said there was no food in the bag the monkeys were attempting to get into, but there was a passport, wallets and phones.
Whitelum returned without his children to salvage his belongings while battling the monkeys in the method.
He ended up with a bleeding wound on his hand from a monkey tooth, which meant he was in danger of contracting rabies, a deadly virus transmitted to humans from the saliva of rabid animals.
Carausu was snorkeling when she heard screams from the beach.
“I’m not kidding, honey, they went to Darwin,” Whitelum told her as she walked back to the beach after a hard ordeal.
One other friend who was on the beach on the time added: “It was hectic. It was really scary, it might need scared him (Darwin) for all times.
Whitelum criticized the gang of people for watching and doing nothing to assist.
“It was amazing,” he said.
The family traveled to town for medical attention, where clinic staff said they treated one to 2 people a day after monkey bites.
“I actually have to stay five or more needles in or across the wound, then five injections in 20 days, then one other injection today,” Whitelum explained in the video.
“So two shots today and five in the finger, and one other 4 shots in the subsequent 20 days.”
In the course of the injections into the finger, Whitelum even lost consciousness.
Carausu explained that the couple had not done any research on the island before sailing to the island.
“If we had known this beach was known for monkey attacks, we would not have gone,” she said.
Whitelum, who grew up in a small town in South Australia, and Carausu, who grew up in a small coastal town in Western Australia, spent nine years sailing all over the world and documenting their travels on their YouTube channel Sailing La Vagabonde.