Dutch bears in monkey murder shocker

Posse chases macaque into electric fence

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Biology, 16th May 2006 10:43 GMT

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Bears at a Dutch safari park hunted down a petrified monkey in front of horrified visitors, then ate it, AP reports.

"Several" sloth bears chased a Barbary macaque into a protective electric fence, where it was stunned. The plucky Gibraltarian wasn't finished however, and recovered to retreat up a branch.

That was the monkey's schoolboy error though. As every woodsman worth their salt knows, bears are excellent tree climbers, and one of the posse simply reached up and ripped the terrified scamp from its perch. Those of a nervous dispostion look away now; AP has a picture of the gruesome moment here.

The bear then dragged its limp victim back to the den where three of the mob devoured the macaque.

A statement from Beekse Bergen Safari Park said: “In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday."

"Harmony temporarily disturbed"? We hope they're right, and this is not the opening skirmish of a brutal struggle for supremacy between primates and our ursine cousins; the mauling was surely the bears' revenge on monkey-kind for the blood of world's rarest bear, a polar-grizzly hybrid which was killed by a hunter in Canada late last week.®

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