Baboons Carjack SA Tourist Vehicles To Get Access To Picnic Lunches - AFP

[hatrack]

Well, they didn't drive away, but . . . you try shooing a hungry baboon out of your car!

A shrewd troop of baboons caused havoc along South Africa's Cape peninsula over the weekend when they hijacked motorists' cars to get at picnic food, local media reported Monday.

Tourists feeding the primates in the popular holiday destination are being blamed for the behaviour, as curious motorists stopping to watch the baboons fell prey to their antics, causing a huge backup of cars on the coastal road.

The Cape Times reported a group of American tourists got out of their car to photograph the animals, and their children tried to pet them, when several members of the troop jumped into their car and started eating their food. A large male baboon also accessed a separate car through an open window, removing food from the cubbyhole.

Tour operators exacerbated the problem by throwing food to baboons to provide perfect picture opportunities for their clients, the newspaper said.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/090316102602.iyamtapp.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Has someone been showing these primates Yogi Bear cartoons? n/t

[dflprincess]

2. That was the first thing I thought of! (eom)

[Nihil]

3. Morons.

Must be about time for a Darwin award with that lot - the sooner the better.

I sure as hell wouldn't think about trying to pet a baboon ... :scared:

[XemaSab]

4. I've played Scarab of Ra

I know how it is. :scared:

[HamdenRice]

5. I've had my share of run ins with baboons in S. Africa -- and not in a car

When I was doing research there in the 80s, I used to go hiking and rock climbing, and they would sometimes watch and scream at us from the cliffs. I had a crazy Indian-Kenyan-American friend, Faisal, who was teaching me rock climbing and showed me how to yell back at them.

Have you ever seen the commercial about the idiot who dresses up as a lion, approaches a lion in the wild and the voiceover says something like, "begin lion irritation phase"? I was like, Faisal, do you really want to annoy these guys?

Baboons are pretty scary, violent and dangerous, and it's utterly amazing how large their population is in a highly developed and settled country like South Africa. It makes you wonder how they can be common enough to become an urban pest, like deer and squirrels are here, and yet the other primate populations are so fragile.

In the Transvaal, where I was, they are very wild and still mostly afraid of people, but somehow in the Cape they've become completely unafraid of people and suburbs and they are raiding people's garbage, and even houses and cars.

I just wonder is there anything to be learned about them in terms of megafauna adapting to human populations and thriving -- like deer in North America.

[hunter]

6. Coyotes seem to have adapted pretty well to human populations.

I've seen them around my house skulking about at night like ordinary dogs, probably looking for cats or garbage to eat, and even briefly mistaken them for my own dogs. In Yosemite Valley I've seen coyotes walking down paved trails with joggers and bicyclists passing by them.

[HamdenRice]

7. Certain species seem able to begin self-domestication

That's the new theory about dogs. It wasn't that people took in wolf pups and bred them for docility; it's that the wild dog predecessor scavenged human waste dumps and the ones that were least fearful ate more and reproduced more, and over generations, they turned themselves into the domestic dog.

So we have in North America, coyotes, black bears, deer, squirrels, and certain other species becoming adjusted to the exurbs and even suburbs. In Africa, it's baboons and springbok.

But it's strange that coyotes do this and wolves don't, despite how closely related they are, or that baboons do this but no other African primate.

[Marrah_G]

8. Yikes- I would not mess with baboons.