Langurs Hired for Monkey Security at 2010 Commonwealth Games

by Jordan Yerman | September 28, 2010 at 01:50 pm

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Commonwealth Games 2010: Monkey vs Monkey

Among the threats facing the 2010 Commonwealth Games: marauding gangs of monkeys. In India, monkeys run amuck, causing damage to property and sometimes attacking people. The Commonwealth Games' organizing committee cannot risk visiting athletes getting attacked by rogue monkeys, so they're trying an innovative solution: hire bigger monkeys to act as simian bouncers.

Enter the langur.

Langurs are larger monkeys, and officials are hoping that they will be suitably aggressive if approached by the smaller Rhesus macaques, which are both loathed by those who maintain infrastructure and protected by devout Hindus. It's no joke: Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa fell to his death from a rooftop after he was attacked by macaques.

28 langurs are on staff, as it were, and 10 more have been brought in from a neighboring province.

"They are there for the monkey problem. They will be moving outside the stadiums," Devender Prasad, an inspector from the enforcement department of the NDMC, told AFP.
Wildlife has so far posed major headaches for the under-fire organisers, with stray dogs found in venues and a snake captured at the tennis complex.

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