Threatened by a monkey on Shan Ganshan about an hour ago. This lot (which I havn’t encountered before) seem more aggressive than the bigger and more human-habituated population near Kaoshiung.
Picked up a rock (Shan Ganshan is a fossil reef so its all honeycomb coral limestone) to threaten it back, and, fortunately, it backed off.
Not so fortunately, the rock was full of red ants. If I’d had to use it, and had connected, the monkey would probably have been impressed by its biological payload.
I certainly am, though my arms now look a bit lopsided. Popeye on the right, Olive Oyl on the left.
And at 500 yds I wouldn’t have needed to do anything, though 500 yds is hardly ever a realistic tactical range anyway, anywhere, (except maybe Kansas, if the corn is temporarily not quite as high as an elephant’s eye).
Certainly would’nt be on Shan Ganshan, which is heavily wooded.
Tried quite hard to get some action about an infestation on campus. Blank incomprehension/indifference succeeded by irritation. I kept pestering them for a while but the inertia defeated me.
Eventually I heard a student got attacked and they took some action
In the current MAD context, I’m not sure they were fire ants, (though they seemed to fit the profile, as does my arm) and I’m not sure I could find the exact location again. I’ll probably be back there in better light though so I could have another look.
Was up there (armed with a length of aluminium shelving support) yesterday but saw no monkeys, probably because of the higher weekend level of human disturbance, which I’ll try and avoid in future too. Karaoke FFS!
This contrasts with Friday evening when, coming off the mountain in the gathering dusk about an hour after the monkey-rock-ant Triangle Of Terror Dilemma, I suprised /was surprised by a troupe of about 50 individuals hanging out at an observation pavilion. To my relief they went for the high ground double quick, limiting themselves to a bit of vocal abuse when they were on the cliff-top above me.
There are several bat caves in that area. I wondered if primates might use them for shelter in heavy rain. Primates (especially chimps and gorillas) are of course similar to us genetically so they would seem obvious routes for novel human infections, as reported for HIV.
Bat caves are fairly unpleasant places though so they probably avoid them, preferring observation pavilions when available, which are, of course, also used by people to prepare and eat food.
There some literature on it, as you might expect. For example gorillas and chimps apparently suffer Ebola die-offs from eating fruit contaminated by fruit-bat saliva.
Leroy EM, Kumulungui B, Pourrut X, et al. Fruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus Nature, 438 (2005), pp. 575-576
Is there any known “Bush Meat” monkey-eating tradition or current practice in Taiwan?
