SIEM REAP, Cambodia — A batting monkey struggles and writhes as he tries to escape the guy who grabs him by the neck over a concrete cistern, dousing him with water.
In the video clip, a user plays with the genitals of a young male macaque sitting on a limestone block of an ancient temple to excite him on camera.
The abuse of monkeys at Angkor, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northwestern Cambodia, is rarely so blatant, but the government says it’s a developing challenge as others look for new tactics to lure internet users into making money.
“The monkey deserves to live in the wild, where it is supposed to live, but it is treated like a pet,” said Long Kosal, a spokesman for Apsara, the Cambodian work center that oversees the Angkor archaeological site.
“They’re creating content to make money by having an audience on YouTube, so it’s a big challenge for us,” he said.
Apsara has little equipment to save YouTubers from filming in general, but has opened an investigation with the Ministry of Agriculture to gather evidence to prosecute the most serious attackers, who are rarely filmed, Long Kosal said.
“If we can build a case, they will be arrested,” he said. Any animal abuser will be seriously punished by the law in Cambodia. “
Videos from YouTube, Facebook, and other sites with graphic content, but dozens of other clips of cute monkeys jumping and gambling remain, generating thousands of prospects and subscribers.
However, just making those videos creates a very close interaction with the monkeys, which the government and animal rights activists say creates a host of other problems, whether it’s for the macaques or others visiting one of Southeast Asia’s most popular tourist spots.
Recently, in front of the famous 12th-century Bayon temple in Angkor, at least a dozen YouTubers, all young men, gathered around a small organization of long-tailed macaques and eventually snapped pictures of a mother with a baby on her back and stalking. Wherever she went.
The wild monkeys feasted on bananas thrown at them by YouTubers and drank water from plastic bottles.
A young macaque laughed at a half-eaten neon green ice cream, tossed along the road, before dropping it to transfer to a banana.
An Apsara guard in a blue shirt watched, but those filming were unfazed, illustrating the main problem: It’s okay to simply film the monkeys, even if feeding them is frowned upon.
At the same time, this makes them dependent on help and the close interaction with humans makes them increasingly competitive with tourists.
“Tourists were wearing their food and grabbing it,” Long Kosal said, flipping through several photographs of recent macaque wounds on his phone. “If tourists resist, they bite and it’s very dangerous. “
Foraging among tourists also attracts monkeys from the surrounding jungle to ancient sites, where they uproot temples and cause other damage, he added.
Tourist Cadi Hutchings has been careful to stay away from the monkeys, after her excursion advisor warned her about the growing threat of being bitten.
“What’s your food, but you also have to understand that there has to be a boundary between human intervention in nature,” said Wales, 23.
“It’s obviously smart that so many tourists come because it’s such a lovely place, but at the same time you have to be careful that with more and more people. . . monkeys don’t acclimate too much,” Hutchings said.
However, many other tourists stopped to take their own photographs and videos (some spread bananas to zoom in) before heading to the nearby temple.
YouTuber Ium Daro, who filmed the Angkor monkeys about 3 months ago, followed a mother and her baby down a dirt road with his iPhone held on a selfie stick to get closer.
The 41-year-old said he had noticed some monkeys physically abusing him and saw a challenge in what he and others did for a living.
“The monkeys here are friendly,” he says. After we take pictures of them, we feed them, so it’s like we’re paying them to give us the chance to take pictures of them. “
As he spoke, a young macaque climbed onto a passerby’s leg and unsuccessfully pulled a plastic water bottle from his pocket.
One YouTuber said he started filming monkeys during the Covid-19 pandemic, after tourist numbers plummeted, making it highly unlikely to make a living as a tuk-tuk driver.
Daro said he was looking for a way to supplement his source of income as a rice trader and was too new to the business to have made much profit.
Many, like Phut Phu, work as salaried painters for YouTube page operators.
The 24-year-old said he started filming monkeys two-and-a-half years ago, when he was looking for plein air paintings to help him deal with a lung problem.
He works there every day from 7 a. m. to 5 p. m. M. , earning $200 a month (the equivalent of the Cambodian minimum wage) and said he hoped the government would not take action to prevent it.
“I want those monkeys,” he said, holding up an over-zoomed Nikon Coolpix camera provided by his employer, the same style most YouTubers used.
Given the difficulties in identifying and apprehending the culprits of the monkeys’ physical abuse, along with simply raising money through YouTube videos, Long Kosal said Apsara’s task is difficult.
“That’s our problem,” he said. We want to find false reasons that we can use against them so that we don’t abuse the monkeys. “
For Nick Marx, director of wildlife rescue and care at Wildlife Alliance, which implements conservation systems in Southeast Asia and concerns the release of wildlife at Angkor, the answer is simple, though perhaps equally elusive.
“The biggest challenge is that those [videos] are generated to make money,” he said in an interview from Phnom Penh. “If other people who don’t like that kind of thing stopped looking for it, it would help solve the problem. “Challenge of Abuse. “
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