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Attack of the Evil Monkeys From Hell
grrlscientist writes "A new form of communication between wild vervet monkeys and humans is causing humans distress — and a collapse of their food supply. Approximately 300 vervet monkeys in Kenya are sexually harassing the women of a village so they can steal their crops. None of the attempts to discourage the monkeys has so far worked."
It's a criminal offense to harm them.
"they would need to think their way around a .38 bullet"
For small, fast moving critters like monkeys I would use bird shot. It would be hard to hit them with a bullet.
See ethology of vervets.
Best bet on where they learned to make sexual gestures? Watching the people in the village. Lesson learned? Never flip off a monkey :)
TFA says the monkeys have avoided traps and poisoned food, so someone is clearly trying to harm or kill them, protected status or not.
If you want to get technical bird shot is a lousy way to go. You're more likely to badly injure them than kill them unless you're fairly close. Something like #4 Buckshot is better. They hold 28 pellets that are each nearly the size of a .22 round. There are rounds like turkey shot but most bird shot is smaller than BBs. It's really meant for small birds not mammals. Small buckshot gives you a better chance of killing rather than wounding them. It's common for bird shot to not kill the birds just cripple them. At a short distance it can be devastating but after 20 or 30 feet it looses energy fast and spreads out.
After all, how did they learn to make rude human sexual gestures in the first place?
Perhaps the monkeys have to share one TV and a single tape of the 2006 B.E.T. Hip-Hop awards? How else can you explain the dissing of the bitches and hos, the pointing at the genitals, etc...
The ban is not to protect some individual monkey from being harmed, it's to prevent the extinction of species.
And, they had been killing the monkeys. They've killed so many that they now have protected them to prevent the vervets, and the plants that depend on their seed dispersal, from going extinct.