One of the places I visited while taking a short vacation in Bali last weekend was the Ubud Monkey Forest. Overall, the visit was more upsetting than pleasant. Vendors sell bananas and sweet potatoes inside the park, a practice that encourages tourists to get very close to the animals. While I was there, I saw monkeys steal other food from careless people who had stupidly brought in bags of chips and juice boxes, which the monkeys made little work of snatching and opening. I saw lots of groups getting monkeys to climb all over them by dangling oranges and bananas in thier faces. I also saw one crazy monkey fight and a couple of sickly looking moneys I wouldn’t want to touch. It was all very sad. Still sadder was the fact that there was also a lot of trash in the ravines of what might have been a beautiful park. I wasn’t able to capture the bulk of the human arrogance and monkey aggression I witnessed, but here is a short clip of a monkey digging through fruit peels and trash in the park.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 10:13 pm |
This is really sad. I hate zoos but love animals and want to go see them but I always end up angry and feeling so sorry for them. People really don’t use common sense and forget that animals are living beings, not toys. Poor monkeys!
Friday, November 7, 2008 at 2:57 am |
This was so much worse than a zoo.