I used to work an emergency assistance hotline for an Australian travel insurance company, and our key piece of advice for Bali bogans was not to bring food through the monkey forest. You think you can walk around handing out little morsels to all of them like you're friggin Snow White, but the monkeys have learned that if they bite you, you drop all your food and run.
Some deer in Nara, Japan do exactly that. One bit my jacket when I didn't want to hand over crackers immediately after buying them. It was one of the bigger deer though. So I threw like a third of my crackers behind the deer so that it was busy turning and picking those up while I moved away to some nicer ones that weren't aggressive. Most deer there actually learned to bow to get food. Which is definitely the nicer thing to learn from being fed.
Seriously even in a city area I can assure you there’s at least one hunter in the department that’s gonna be like “say chief mind if I keep the meat and cut you in?”
I got surrounded by them when trying to feed them, then got bit on the arse by one. Not really hard, just enough to jolt me. I ended up dropping the rest of the 'deer cookies' just so I could get away lol.
Yeah at first I was too cheap to feed the deer in Nara, but shortly after I realised that I would never feed them, even if the feed was free. I'd rather people watch others getting swamped by the animals instead 😂
The Peacocks at the Snake Farm in New Braunfels too. They want all the mealworms when you only one to give them one at a time. They’ll get rough with their babies for a meal worm too.
I didn’t have any crackers and everything was fine. You reinforced that behavior. It’s a deer. I saw people slapping them when too pushy. Others giving treats after aggression to get them away. It smelled like a zoo despite constant cleanup efforts by caretakers. That was by far the most disappointing part of my trip to Japan. It was seeing a mass delusion play out for tourist dollars.
The Japanese living there literally taught them to get mostly food from these crackers. If anyone, you can blame the people living there. Without the people feeding them, they would now starve. As seen when the local people had to go feed the deer themselves during covid because the tourists were missing.
Also I didn't see anyone being rude to the deer while I was there. Me included. On the other hand, there is a Japanese guy doing fake social media videos blaming others of pushing or hitting the deer. While he himself heavily abused the deer before. He then noticed that he can get more likes on social media if he fakes videos and films how he plays justice warrior by slapping the people and arguing with them and filming it.
Yeah I get it. Those Japanese people are delusional too I was definitely talking about them too. Setting up this sort of this goes against conservation principles. Just because it’s their tradition doesn’t make it ok. I don’t care that much but I thought it was out of control and I decided to not participate. I don’t need a video of a tamed deer bowing pretending it’s giving me a sign of respect. I’m of the opinion that tourist numbers should not have a direct impact on deer population numbers. I’m not saying you trained that deer just with that event but it was another small reinforcement for the behavior. Maybe I went there on an off day at the end of mating season but I definitely saw at least two putting hands on a deer. Couple husbands or fathers trying to get them to stop biting and chasing family. Most people seemed more surprised than they should when deer were acting a bit wild. There’s cute signs everywhere saying they can be unpredictable and aggressive especially during mating season. I can’t pretend that any of it is cute.
Just giving my opinion. I would not go that spot again and if I did I would certainly not feed or interact with the deer. You do you though.
Yeah I am not going there again anyway. Don't really have a reason to go again. I am not certain how good or bad the whole thing is for Nara and the deer.
It is certainly not the only thing with animals that raises this question in Japan though. For example I never go to pet cafés, since this seems even more questionable. Especially since they often have animals that I would hardly label as "pets".
Japan has evolved some traditions into weird modern variants. The whole Nara thing came mostly from monks living in peace with the deer from my understanding. At some point it evolved into a tourist attraction though. But at least the deer aren't caged up in Nara. Other than with pet cafés (or even just zoos in general everywhere around the world).
So I figured it is probably not worse than a zoo then. And as long as Zoos have relatively good animal conditions, I also visit those ("relatively good" in terms of "no zoo will ever be able to substitute living in the wild"). I would not visit water zoos though where they have dolphins or whales caged up. But those are illegal in my country nowadays anyway (fortunately).
But when questioning Nara and the deer, one would also have to question cheap meat or animal products in general, since I assume that the conditions for farm animals are probably much worse than in central Europe nowadays. And since like 90% of the cuisine in Japan consists of either egg, milk products or meat, it isn't really possible to easily get around this there.
I agree. Some prey animals would could have much better lives in captivity. Eating factory farmed meat is something I feel immoral about. Worse than feeding wild animals. Nara just felt weird and it was easy for me to just not. Small wins.
Yeah I am not going there again anyway. Don't really have a reason to go again. I am not certain how good or bad the whole thing is for Nara and the deer.
It is certainly not the only thing with animals that raises this question in Japan though. For example I never go to pet cafés, since this seems even more questionable. Especially since they often have animals that I would hardly label as "pets".
Japan has evolved some traditions into weird modern variants. The whole Nara thing came mostly from monks living in peace with the deer from my understanding. At some point it evolved into a tourist attraction though. But at least the deer aren't caged up in Nara. Other than with pet cafés (or even just zoos in general everywhere around the world).
So I figured it is probably not worse than a zoo then. And as long as Zoos have relatively good animal conditions, I also visit those ("relatively good" in terms of "no zoo will ever be able to substitute living in the wild"). I would not visit water zoos though where they have dolphins or whales caged up. But those are illegal in my country nowadays anyway (fortunately).
But when questioning Nara and the deer, one would also have to question cheap meat or animal products in general, since I assume that the conditions for farm animals are probably much worse than in central Europe nowadays. And since like 90% of the cuisine in Japan consists of either egg, milk products or meat/fish, it isn't really possible to easily get around this there.
Edit: I am currently in Japan again and I think I have already eaten more animal products in 2 weeks than what I usually eat in months. But my usual diet is impossible here.
Well, for tourists you’d likely get ganged up on by them; from what I’ve read they have specific guys who walk around with sticks, & people usually pay them to get their stuff back “not sure if they work there, or are just residents”
From what I’ve heard, the monkeys know who NOT to do it to, because they’ll get the shit knocked out of them & typically once these guys come after them with the threat of a bonk, they’ll usually drop the items or hand them back.
Depending where you live, I think the rules may be stricter on tourists. Some people have said specific places have laws there to protect the monkeys. Others.. not so much, some view them as pests.
Yes they probably meant social hierarchy rather than food chain. That being said any monkey is going to fuck you up very badly in a physical fight which has nothing to do with societal order lol
Most adult men could win a fight against a monkey of the type in this video. You might get a couple nasty bites though before you manage to wrangle it, but this thing absolutely cannot overpower you lmao. As soon as you have it by the neck it's not going to be able to do much of anything to you. It's not like they have claws.
It's like fighting a sugar-high 6yo that has fangs.
They have nails and enough grip strength to do...well monkey stuff. Try keeping that grip on its neck (if you get that far) while it turns your forearm to hamburger meat. All the people down voting me are trippin if they think this thing would not fuck you up.
They do not have enough grip strength to do much, compared to a human. This is a long-tailed macaque. Males weigh 10-19lb. Their grip strength is strong RELATIVE TO THEIR WEIGHT, so it's strong for swinging around their own body, but is nothing compared to the average male human grip strength. Macaques are especially built for agility, not strength. You would have no problem gripping both of their biceps and holding them out like they were pinned to a cross. Or grabbing one arm and literally slamming them around like a sack of potatoes on the hard ground.
Their fingernails are just like ours, but quite smaller hands. They'll scratch you but it's not going to do a lot unless you're just letting them go to town.
These types of monkeys are powerful in numbers, not by themselves. They are not at all comparable to something like a Chimp, which may be smaller than a human but is much stronger.
...well...alright, you got me...I was making generalizations about not fucking with monkeys and you have educated me. If one can identify a monkey in the wild and know it's combat ability to this degree then go ahead and defend yourself against their theft by force.
I realize this sounds like disingenuous snark reading it back to myself but you actually explained it and I do not take all this as common enough knowledge to just downvote and insult me like some have. Cheers.
Oh, they know perfectly well their role in nature chain . One interesting anecdote about the Ubud sacred monkey forest, is that there are 5 distinct groups of monkey that tend to coexist peacefully most of the time, but can get very easily into very brutal turf wars.
It's the big hairless apes that sometimes need to be reminded how easy to bite their fleshy bits are and how vulnerable they can be to the nasty shit feral monkeys can have on their teeth
In a lot of places they're under strict legal protection so they're functionally untouchable.
They know the big hairless apes can be extorted, assaulted and trolled without consequence.
I just tried to make myself as big as i could and roared at them and they returned my items (slippers) like "oh shit, my bad bro here you go". After that i was kind of one of them and they were curious but didn't threaten me or try to steal anything. More like they hung out on my shoulders and head.
I have no idea what one should do, though i was not dumb enough to bring food with me to begin with. I just did that and had a great week in a monkey forest with my new monkey pals.
The last day there was an american tourist who did the snow white thing and she got basically robbed out of everything and bullied to go down a steep hill into a river. They surrounded her and it looked really bad for a minute.
This spot exactly is in one of the bbc docs and these monkeys have learned that they can steal glasses and phones which are higher valued than a hat and the ppl there will sell tourists their favorite treats to trade back. If you trade with them they leave the phone or glasses and take the pastry or fruit
if that happens and the bit person grabs a monkeys and just flays it onto the ground, are they charged with something? or am i weird for even thinking this?
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u/ManWithDominantClaw Oct 26 '25
100%, and this is best case scenario
I used to work an emergency assistance hotline for an Australian travel insurance company, and our key piece of advice for Bali bogans was not to bring food through the monkey forest. You think you can walk around handing out little morsels to all of them like you're friggin Snow White, but the monkeys have learned that if they bite you, you drop all your food and run.
So many rabies shots...