Cartoons have been telling us forever that monkeys love eating bananas and for most of us, that's where the conversation ends. That is until today.
A video emerged on the internet showing a group of monkeys not just eating bananas but loving every bite. There's obviously some projection and anthropomorphizing happening here. But what is objectively true is that they devoured those bananas.
In the video, shared by the Nepalese non-profit Feeding Animals, a person delivers a box of bananas to a group of monkeys in what looks like a park. The monkeys swarm in.
In the comments, people really take to the fact that some of them grab two or even three — they usually fit the third in their mouths. Some appreciated that the monkeys are "smart enough to know not to eat the peel." Others cracked jokes, saying "imagine how slippery that place is going to be" and "not one thank you."
But you're not supposed to feed wildlife
Wildlife experts always say that you should never feed wildlife. The reason is animals could develop what's called "food conditioning." That's when they begin to ignore their instincts to forage or hunt for food and instead rely entirely on humans. While the practice could result in animals begging, stealing, or attacking humans if they don't get what they want, the food they get won't provide the nutrition they need.
On the group's website, Feeding Animals acknowledges the expert opinions but argues that the wild animals that they feed are already conditioned. "They live in a small forest in the middle of the city where there are thousands of them in one place. A forest in the middle of the city where they have no source of food. Every day they create terror in human settlements. Takes food from people walking on the street. People serve stale rotten food and most of them look sick," the group wrote in a blog post.
So instead of letting them eat trash, they give them bananas and other fruit or vegetables. For a small monkey, a banana is a convenient and nutritional source of food. What's more, bananas are the third biggest fruit crop in Nepal. Experts say Nepalese bananas make up almost a percentage point of the country's agricultural gross domestic product.
