Baboon Burglars: How Gang of Kleptomaniac Monkeys Terrorises an Estate in South Africa so Residents are Scared to Leave the House

  • Baboons swarm SAS style up the sides of blocks of flats, opening windows
  • For people, the weapons of choice is paintball guns and pepper sprays
  • ‘No-one understands what is happening! This is a complete nightmare’
  • Baboons infer from people’s fear that they rank higher in the pecking order
  • Those who treat the baboons with respect seem to have few problems

Bill Mouland
Daily Mail
August 4, 2013

In the street battle for supremacy between man and baboon, it can only be said that both sides are using guerrilla tactics.

For the baboons it means swarming SAS style up the sheer sides of blocks of flats, prising open windows and plundering anything that is inside. Usually they just want food, but sometimes a flapping set of net curtains or a child’s cuddly toy bear can provide some added entertainment.

For the humans, the weapons of choice – given that their enemy is a protected species – tend to be paintball guns and pepper sprays. They have the momentary effect of driving the baboons away, but hunger and sheer nerve always bring them back.

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Go away! An angry resident at the Cape Town apartment block is trying to scare off the group of Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus) to no avail – he can be seen here in the centre of the picture shaking his fist at the monkeys from one of his windows.

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To survive, they trawl through waste bins, loiter at rubbish dumps, steal from shops and markets and prowl around the picnic sites. Some are such practised scavengers that they know exactly when the rubbish carts will be arriving with fresh supplies at the dump.

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Sweet tooth: A female baboon with young feeding on a discarded jar of peanut butter – the baboons trawl through waste bins and steal from shops and markets. Some even know when the rubbish carts will be arriving with fresh supplies.

In the suburb of Scarborough, a woman screams at the pair of baboons sitting casually on the roof of her house munching hunks of pilfered brown bread.

‘No-one understands what is happening here! This is the complete nightmare’, she yells, explaining that a baboon recently snatched shopping from her daughter’s hands. ‘She is completely traumatised,’ she adds. ‘It is not even safe to leave the house. And no-one does anything about it.’

A neighbour hurls a futile stick at them – but they carry on munching. ‘I hate them,’ he says.

Not far away in Main Street, employees at a safari company have just discovered what happens if you go away for the week-end and leave a window open.

A group of baboons led by a male called Moby has left a trail of destruction in the staff kitchen. First target was the fridge where every packet has been opened, investigated and eaten. The menu runs to bread, pasta, cheese, peppers, eggs, carrots, tuna and corn.

Others preferred the contents of the rubbish bin. Suffice to say, the animals didn’t bother to use the staff toilets.

At the Groot Constantia vineyard, manager Jean Naude laments the loss of vines and grapes he suffers every year because of the 40 resident baboons he is powerless to stop – except by paying for the whole estate to be fenced off.

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