Thailand has started sterilizing hundreds of monkeys in a city famous for its macaque population due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has left them hungry, aggressive, and fighting for food from residents.
The Lopburi province and its 2,000 monkey population have drawn a lot of tourist attention from all over the world.
Tourist that visit the province feed the animal so they could pose for images with them.
Thailand closed its borders on April 4, 2020, to control the fast-growing coronavirus infections in the country.
The monkeys are not adapting well to the new way of living in the country.
SUpakarn Kaewchot, a government veterinarian, said:
They’re so used to having tourists feed them and the city provides no space for them to fend for themselves. With the tourists gone, they’ve been more aggressive, fighting humans for food to survive. They’re invading buildings and forcing locals to flee their homes.
Unlike monkeys that are in the wild, city monkeys are not capable of finding food on their own.
To control their fast-growing population, authorities have placed large cages around the city with tantalizing fruits in them.
Around 300 monkeys will be sterilized by the authorities.
After being captured in the cages, the monkeys will be transferred to an operating table, where they are sedated by the authorities.
They are to be shaved and tattooed with a unique reference number under their arms.
They lay on their backs under a green cloth as veterinary perform a vasectomy or a tubal ligation operation.
The monkeys get 1 night to recover from the operation before they are taken to their respective tribes again.
The government of Thailand currently wants to sterilize around 500 of the 2000 macaques that are present in the tourist city.
The government cleared out that the sterilization will only be done in the city areas, not in the wild.
Authorities said that they want to slow down the fast reproduction rate of macaques population in the city.