Bookmark Project - Rock Macaque at the Taipei Zoo (animals)

We did encounter some wild macaques near the village where Chenjean grew up, but this pic - the best of the lot - was captured at the Taipei Zoo.

These guys are native exclusively to the island of Taiwan, and have an interesting - and perhaps tragically predictable - history.

My very first time visiting Chenjean's parents was in December of 1987, and I will never forget the monkeys that were there.  Just a few steps from their house was a place where they had a few monkeys on display.  Instead of in cages, however, they had cables connected between two trees at a level that was low enough for visitors to get a close view.  The monkeys were tethered to these cables with a loop that allowed them freedom of movement from one tree to the next; at one end there was an old 55-gallon barrel that offered protection from the frequent rains, and wind generated by the several hurricanes that pass through each year.

Naturally the first morning there, after we'd eaten breakfast, I made a beeline to see the monkeys.  It was such a romantic notion...here I was smack dab in the middle of the jungles of Formosa that I'd read about as a child in school, and here were some of the native monkeys that underscored the fact that we were really in this exotic land.  At the time there were two adults and a baby latching on to what was presumably the mother.  I spent some time there, transfixed...until I noticed something.

I looked closer...could this be true?  Yes, each of the adults had only one hand.  When I asked it was explained to me that a hand was cut off from the adults because they were smart enough to undo their chains, and this handicap prevented them from getting away.  The baby, however, was allowed to keep both hands because it wasn't about to leave its mother.

I was blown away by this.  Who is it that catches a monkey and cuts off a hand?  Well, it was about money.  This little village was a tourist stop for the islanders on their way to a waterfall that was a major attraction at the time.  The monkeys were there to entice the visitors to linger long enough to stop for a meal or buy some trinkets.  When I was there in 1987 for my first visit the volume of tourists had slowed to a trickle in the waning days of the attraction, but these hapless creatures were still there because they had no chance of survival were they to be released.

Very much to their credit, the authorities were eventually persuaded to crack down on this type of cruelty and passed legislation to protect the species.  Some relics of the tourism have survived, but the monkeys have since been left largely alone to proliferate in the wild.