Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Monkey Rides the Metro

Scholars working in the field of animal geography have long studied the phenomenon of urban animals--wild and not-so-wild animals who find themselves sharing urban and suburban space with humans--and documenting many of the conflicts that emerge from that situation.

Many such urban animals have emerged in recent years, thanks to urbanization and suburbanization, as humans have increasingly encroached upon wild animals' homes. But in other cases, human and non-human animal have shared space for hundreds or thousands of years.

In India, for example, humans and monkeys have long co-existed. Because monkeys represent the god Hanuman in Hinduism, Hindus are expected to feed monkeys--mostly rhesus--on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and as this video shows, monkeys populate virtually every public space in India--even the Metro, where most commuters ignore this little traveler.