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People in a southwestern Japanese city have come under attack from monkeys that are trying to snatch babies, biting and clawing at flesh, and sneaking into nursery schools. The attacks - on 58 people since July 8 - are getting so bad Yamaguchi city hall hired a special unit to hunt the animals with tranquilizer guns. The monkeys aren't interested in food, so traps haven't worked. They have targeted mostly children and the elderly. "They are so smart, and they tend to sneak up and attack from behind, often grabbing at your legs," city official Masato Saito said ... When...

The monkeys are snatched from the wild and trained to pick up to 1,000 coconuts a day, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said The animal rights group said pigtailed macaques in Thailand were treated like "coconut-picking machines". In a statement, Waitrose said: "As part of our animal welfare policy, we have committed to never knowingly sell any products sourced from monkey labour. Male monkeys are able to pick up to 1,000 coconuts a day, Peta says. It's thought that a human can pick about 80. It said it also discovered "monkey schools", where the animals were trained...

Viewers were left in stitches as a lion-tailed macaque repeatedly slapped a giant squirrel in a fight over an enormous jackfruit on last night's episode of BBC1's Primates. The 'marvellous' moment happened during a segment about the macaques living in the Western Ghats mountain range in India. It showed how lion-tailed macaques took advantage of the Malabar giant squirrel's sense of smell to locate ripe jackfruit and steal it from them. Using a surprisingly simple technique, the macaque simply batted the squirrel repeatedly on the nose to keep it away from the food.

A bizarre report of Taliban insurgents training monkeys and baboons to shoot at U.S. and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan seems unrealistic at best, according to an expert. The story that appeared this month in the Chinese People's Daily suggested that insurgents used a reward-and-punishment system to train macaques and baboons to target soldiers wearing U.S. military uniforms. The Taliban supposedly "taught monkeys how to use the Kalashnikov, Bren light machine gun and trench mortars," the People's Daily wrote.

A LEADING US Republican Senator has sparked a furore for his use of a pejorative term to refer to an Asian man of Indian descent, a US newspaper has reported. The Washington Post reported that Senator George Allen, who is running for re-election to his Senate seat representing the southern state of Virginia, has apologised for what his opponent's campaign said were demeaning and insensitive comments. In remarks on Friday at campaign rally in Virginia, Senator Allen reportedly referred to the Indian-American man - a volunteer with the Senate campaign of his Democratic opponent - as a "macaca". Macaca is...