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Published: October 25th 2014
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I seem to remember that some park in Japan had been somewhat overtaken by
Macaque monkeys and thought
thismight be the place, so had to go check it out. While it turns out that I was wrong about that, it was really quite an interesting experience and I was very glad I went to check it out.
Once you get to the area, there is a bit of a hike to reach the 160m above sea level area where the feeding house is stationed. The hike would likely be too much for your average senior citizen, but most everyone else can easily make the climb. Once you get to where the feeding house is located, you can go inside within which you can purchase drinks for yourself, or fruit or nuts that you can feed to the monkeys. A bag of fruit or nuts could be purchased on this date for ¥ 100. I don't believe you are encouraged to bring your own food to feed them, just the fruit or nuts you purchase there.
You have two options here that are comprised from being inside or outside of the feeding house. Inside the feeding house you can feed
the monkeys, and there is some seating in there as well, and restrooms too. Outside the feeding house, the monkeys are free to roam in amongst the humans and they do so with great ease and apathy. They really do not care about humans at all. They know that you are there, so they don't walk/run into you, but don't appear to pay attention to what you as a human are doing. However, if there appears to be food in a plastic bag, that seems to get their immediate attention, and you are warned to avoid that situation.
When feeding the monkeys, they hang on the wire mesh that is installed on the feeding house, and reach one of their arms in to retrieve food from you. You are recommended to place a piece of food in the palm of your hand and then move your hand to where they can reach yours. While they don't scratch you when grabbing the piece of food from your hand, they don't try to not touch your hand either. I also tried putting pieces of food in their mouth directly, and they were quite ok with that style as well, as funny
as that may sound.
I had some fun with one monkey where after it had grabbed the piece of fruit from my hand, I left my empty hand there for a while. About 10 seconds later that monkey gently slapped my hand away, which I found really funny. A short while after that, with my empty hand still there, the monkey made a grabbing motion, back and forth, with all its digits touching the palm of my hand. Really fascinating in that that was their way to communicate, "more food please".
There is a small pond next to the feeding house that has Koi in it, and quite often the monkeys jump in for a swim or to chase others already in the water. I imagine when the temperature is really warm there (June, July, August), they are routinely in that pond to cool off.
Overall I found the experience rather fascinating. I will go back given the chance.
Here's a quick video of them demonstrating their grooming behavior :
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