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Macaques, one of the most popular monkey species in eastern Asia, are losing their habitats to the increasing encroachment of human activity.

Some of the primates have been forced deeper into the mountains and forests, while others have entered urban areas and tried to live alongside humans.

They live around temples, sift through rubbish for food, and play around humans without fear. When teased by local residents or tourists, they do not always back away but may sometimes attack or bite their tormentors.

Such incidents have happened frequently in China, India, Nepal and many Southeast Asian countries, making the protection of these animals much more complicated than ever before, primatologists have said.

It is therefore essential to take into account elements of human culture and ecology in the conservation of non-human primates such as macaques, rather than treating them as being on "two distinct avenues" as before, said Linda Wolfe, a primatologist attending the 19th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Beijing early this month.

How local people and tourists perceive and act towards non-human primates should be researched to find an effective means of protection, argued Alicia Harmon from Central Washington University in the northwestern United States.

Harmon and her colleagues have done a six-month study at three sites in Indonesia, Nepal and India. The sites were at religious temples frequented by long-tailed macaques and rhesus monkeys.

The researchers found humans generally tolerated the presence of the macaques and rhesus monkeys, and most appeared willing to interact with or feed the animals.

Many of the temple monkeys were so used to humans that they would approach a human carrying food, aggressively grab hold of that person or chase the person until they got the food or lost interest.

Wolfe, a researcher from the Department of Anthropology at the East Carolina University in the United States, ascribed such close human-monkey interaction to Asian people's traditions.

For example, monkeys have appeared in much of Asian mythology. Indian legend has the monkey god Hanuman, while China has the Monkey King (Sun Wukong), who is the mischievous but gallant guardian of the Tang monk Xuanzang on a pilgrimage to India in the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West."

Monkeys have been portrayed as playful, naughty, clever and human-like as well, she noted. That makes them more accessible and more easily accepted by humans, she said.

She proposed that images of Hanuman and the Monkey King be used to facilitate the survival of macaques in these areas.

Religion also may play a great part in humans' treatment of their primate cousins, argued Atul Gupta from the Wildlife Institute of India.

In a report submitted to the seminar, he argued that the Hindu religion has encouraged tolerance of monkeys, rather than conflict with them as previously thought.

In an investigation of monkeys living around urban temples, urban non-temple areas and temples in forests, he found that most human-monkey encounters at urban temples were directly related to the monkeys' lack of food, thus leading to them snatching or stealing food.

At the two other kinds of sites, where food was more readily available, such encounters happened far less frequently, he noted.

Increasing human-monkey interactions have been a cause of some concern among researchers, who found that monkeys tended to overreact at human indiscretions. The monkeys may bite, for example, with threats preceding and following the biting. Such cases have also been frequently observed at temples in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, where monkeys very aggressively chase and bite humans to get food.

Humans pose a greater threat to the monkeys than they do to us. There have been frequent reports of monkeys being electrocuted after they either chewed or hung from electricity cables in cities, according to Harmon.

However, it may not be a good idea to try to protect the monkeys by cutting off their access to humans, Harmon argued.

Rather, considering local needs and perspectives about monkeys is paramount for effective conservation, she said.

(China Daily August 23, 2002)