India plans reform school for monkeys

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Wild monkeys in India have grown so out of control that the state government is planning to build a school for rogue monkeys.

The problem of rogue monkeys is particularly severe in towns close to India's north-western border with Pakistan. Officials accuse them of a variety of bad behaviour from terrorising children, snatching food from people and destroying property... The proposed new monkey school will take in the "worst offenders" and put them through a crash course in good manners.

Indian school for rogue monkeys (via Monkeywire)
(Photo: Peter Garnham)

• [Takuan]

  have they thought about getting some chimps?

• [Takuan]

  social engineering is the answer: start a rumour that there is huge profit to be made in selling monkey parts to the Chinese traditional medicine market. The monkeys will just… disappear.

• [nanuq]

  Sure, blame the monkey when it’s society that’s to blame for creating this problem. Where was the social agencies when the monkeys were being recruited into a life of crime in the first place?

• [Takuan]

  will evolution sort this out?

• [buddy66]

  Sure, chimps will kill and eat them! Don’t get bonobos though, they’ll just fuck them.

• [Takuan]

  death by monkey snoo snoo?

• [54N71460]

  finally, a school suitable for my neighbor’s kids!

• [Anonymous]

  Guys, I think that’s enough jokes and puns.

  Quit monkeying around and post meaningful commentary from this point forth.

• [SednaBoo]

  I guess reform school is better than jail:

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1381241/Indians-jail-marauding-monkeys.html

• [Anonymous]

  School for monkeys??? If the Indian govt has so much money for a reform school for them, why not one for the corrupt officials too???

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Because, anonymous, it’s much easier to teach good behavior to monkeys.

• [Gilbert Wham]

  +1 for just, you know, shooting them.

• [Takuan]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanuman

• [Anonymous]

  Why doesn’t someone just spank the monkeys?

• [TarlSS]

  The villagers can’t just carry big sticks?

  I’m all for no cruelty to animals and venerating gods, but you know..if you’re being attacked, you have to defend yourself.

  It’s no different then if a gang of uncouth, uneducated bikers were to break in, steal your food and wreak your patio furniture. You know, except that they’re less capable of killing you.

• [lennyd44]

  School for monkeys? India needs school for children! Ummm actually, never mind. Human origin is from a monkey.

• [DL]

  School for monkeys + typewriters = Next great novel.

  Why not just give the village kids some super soakers to even things out.

• [entropy]

  why don’t people just visit some corporal punishment on the monkeys? Monkeys used to be afraid of people, maybe that fear could be re instilled. Perhaps i’m a monkiest but still…

• [Takuan]

  gods? remember? look it up.

• [spazzm]

  Good idea.
  Maybe it would be better to start educating them while they’re young, before they become offenders.

  I can see this taking off, well-educated monkeys could hold down simple jobs – earning their keep while still being, essentially, free individuals.

• [Anonymous]

  The monkeys recently killed the mayor. Defenestration. In modern English that means they threw him out the window…

  The monkeys are descendants of Hanuman, so they are “Sacred”. The locals actually liked that bit of news above, btw. Since the monkeys threw him out the window they viewed it as the God Hanuman deciding he was not fit for his job!

  I remember in Africa somewhere they had a problem with monkeys spoiled by money and tourists. The monkeys picked pockets and used the money for vending machines. A shopkeeper got arrested for the crime of using monkeys for theft. He’d let monkeys trade him money for food, a combination of junk food, soda and real food. One day he only gave them $20 worth when the tribe had brought him a $100 and they attacked him and trashed his store. He called the police screaming for them to shoot the monkeys, but in explaining why the monkeys were so single mindedly trashing his shop, he ended up confessing. So the police arrested him, “You are the worse thief!” they said!

• [Takuan]

  relax, Halliburton has been sighted recruiting there.

• [Rick]

  There’s a drawback to venerating wild animals and letting them have free reign within residential areas.

  Reform school or not, I hope they at least vaccinate them.

• [r1ch]

  Monkeys are definitely a real pest in northern India. They’re fascinating company when you don’t have something they want, but you usually do.

  I remember sitting by the Ganges, fully absorbed by my Kurt Vonnegut collection entitled ‘Welcome to the Monkey House’. This turned out to be serendipitous, as all of a sudden I was surrounded by monkeys. I’d heard they steal anything you leave out, but this gang started throwing plastic chairs at me. Book abandoned, I bid a hasty retreat to my room, hoping they didn’t share my taste in literature. One of my neighbours stood her ground, and got jumped. She literally had to get a monkey off her back.

• [phisrow]

  This sounds like a hilarious premise for a movie; but I have very strong doubts about its efficacy.

  We have enough trouble reforming problematic humans despite the advantage of being able to communicate in natural language with them. Here, we have a monkey population running up against an increasing human population. Major structural conflict.

  My prediction is that, in fairly short order, this will either be shut down for uselessness, turned into a simple warehouse for problematic monkeys(if the conditions are bad enough, you won’t have to warehouse them for very long), or turn to simply euthanizing the hard cases.

• [buddy66]

  Reform school? WTF? I say capital punishment!

• [Anonymous]

  I wonder how Monkey Burgers would taste.

• [J.H. Kranti]

  wow i’d like to see what they do to get monkeys in school. we can use it on these kids here.

• [raisindetre]

  I’ve always known monkeys are bad news. I’ve suspected for a long time now that monkeys are inherently evil. This story goes a long way toward proving my hypothesis. Otherwise, why would we need a reform school for them??

• [starbreiz]

  Clearly someone was reading cuteoverload.com today. I saw the pic first, before reading this, and had to go back for the link. This little guy might need a reform school too: http://cuteoverload.com/2009/07/24/i-gotcher-thumbs-up-right-here/