Japanese city under attack! How monkeys have become a menace in Yamaguchi

The Japanese city of Yamaguchi is quite literally going to the monkeys!

Authorities in the city, situated in the western part of Japan, are struggling to find a way to confront the marauding monkeys that have injured 42 people since the beginning of this month.

What exactly is going on and what are authorities doing to bring the situation under control? We take a closer look.

Yamaguchi under attack

The first monkey attack took place in the Ogori area of Yamaguchi on 8 July. According to local reports, the primate climbed into a flat and tried to drag a baby out of the window, inflicting several wounds.

The baby’s mother said she was alerted by her child’s screams and shooed the monkey away, before calling on authorities to catch the animal ‘as soon as possible’.

“It had grabbed her by the legs while she was playing on the floor. It looked like it was trying to drag her outside,” she told local news outlets.

Since then, a total of 42 people have been left attacked by the primates.

Masato Saito, an official from the Yamaguchi city hall, was quoted as telling CNN, “Recently, we’ve heard of cases where the monkey has clung onto a person’s leg and once that person tries to get them off, they get bitten — or they’ve gotten sprung on from behind,” he said.

According to officials, initially only children and women were attacked. However, recent attacks have been against the elderly and adult men have been targeted too.

Japanese macaques are common across large parts of the country and are a pest in some areas, eating crops and sometimes entering homes.

But, this phenomenon of attacking people is rather new.

“All of Yamaguchi city is surrounded by mountains and it’s not rare to see monkeys,” a city official from the agricultural department told AFP news agency. “But it’s rare to see this many attacks in a short period of time.”

Authorities step in

City officials and police have stepped up their patrolling since the attacks, and also laid out traps to ensnare them. However, these measures haven’t worked so far.

In fact, officials are still unsure if the attacks are of one Japanese macaque or of several. But Saito says that the different size of the monkeys being mentioned by witnesses or victims leads to the belief that there are multiple monkeys at play.

Officials have now moved to tranquiliser guns in an attempt to stem the tide of wild monkey attacks.

JUST IN: Japanese macaque attacks are terrorising residents of Yamaguchi city, leaving police with no other option but to use tranquiliser guns on the wild monkeys #Japan pic.twitter.com/ahVeS4IcWV

— BNN Newsroom (@BNNBreaking) July 25, 2022

Reasons for the attacks

Macaques are native to Japan and found throughout most of the islands.

Mieko Kiyono, an expert in wildlife management and associate professor at Kobe University, speaking on the presence of macauques in the country, told CNN: “Japanese macaque monkeys have coexisted alongside humans since the Edo period — Japan is very mountainous and communities live close to mountains where monkeys live, so it is easy for monkeys to enter villages and towns.”

She notes that the attacks could be owing to the resurgence in macaque populations and the growing human population causing a decline in their natural habitats.

The reduction of wild areas and declining access to food has forced these macaques to wander into urban centres in search of sustenance, often crossing paths with unsuspecting residents.

Not just monkeys

Japan has also reported of bears and wild boars making their way into cities.

In Hokkaido, the number of bear sightings skyrocketed from 381 in 2020 - when a black bear terrorised a shopping mall before being shot by a hunter - to a staggering 2,197 last year, as per a DailyMail report.

Wild boars ran amok in a park in Hiroshima last year, inflicting injuries on six people before they too were shot.

With inputs from agencies

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