Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

While in India, the author notices several newspaper headlines about fatal monkey attacks. She sees monkeys—rhesus, langurs, and macaques—on and in buildings, so she wonders about how big the problem is.

The Wildlife Institute of India claims to be working on a contraceptive vaccine that would work in one shot. She interviews the institute’s director of research, Qamar Qureshi, about this invention and learns that since 1972, it has been illegal to kill a wild animal without a permit or an official declaration that the animal is vermin (98). Qureshi believes this is largely due to Hinduism and how many of the gods take animal forms. As the god Hanuman takes the form of a monkey, people feed monkeys at temples, which reduces the monkeys’ fearfulness and makes them more aggressive. Qureshi explains that people have split-minded behavior: They want to feed the monkeys for religious reasons, but they also complain to the government about getting rid of them when they are personally bothered.

Qureshi admits the contraceptive vaccine is a long shot. In the US, contraceptive measures have shown some promise, but only for targeted species in controlled environments. Monkeys roam wide areas and have a varied diet, so lacing food with contraceptive chemicals, as the US does for Norwegian rats in the sewers, would not be very effective (101-02). The PZP (porcine zona pellucida) injections contemplated in India have some large drawbacks. First, they require booster shots, which would be expensive and take time. Second, when female monkeys don’t become pregnant, they go into heat again soon thereafter, which sets off an aggressive hormonal response in the males (103). The same response has been noticed in whitetail deer in the US. Therefore, researchers have tried sex hormone suppressants. After a shot and a booster, this approach has had some success in the wild horses of North Dakota (103). Other research is looking into one-shot compounds that prevent eggs from maturing, which might work for macaques.

Qureshi points out that fertility measures still allow troublesome monkeys to live their full lives; thus, people will think the treatment does not work because they won’t see any change for several years (103). According to the author, a “mildly satisfying element” of the issue is that the wealthier classes struggle with the problem, too, as monkeys spend time in well-maintained parks, pools, and even the halls of India’s Parliament (104). Delhi’s city veterinarian and chief wildlife warden have been pushing responsibility for the monkey problem onto one another. Because the two argue over jurisdiction, some upper-class citizens have taken measures into their own hands by hiring “monkey wallahs,” who use leashed langurs (bigger than macaques) to patrol the grounds, even though the use of langurs is prohibited under the Wildlife Protection Act (106). Thousands of Delhi’s macaques have been translocated to an abandoned mine, where food is brought in every day for them. However, the monkeys easily get out of the enclosures. Additionally, the monkeys that were there first harass newcomers.

In some parts of India where macaques have been officially declared pests, surgical sterilization is being tried. Though 150,000 monkeys have been sterilized, that isn’t enough to deal with the problem. The government has allocated more money for monkey-catching, a job very few want, but not for the medical staff. Moreover, some people oppose the sterilizations on humanitarian grounds (112). A more promising approach is RISUG (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance), in which a polymer gel is injected into the male’s vas deferens, though it still requires suturing (113). The main caveat is that to have a widespread effect on monkey populations, almost all of the males would need to have this procedure.

Justin Dellinger runs the Statewide Mountain Lion Project in California, which is charged with tagging mountain lions, assessing their health, and estimating their numbers. Dellinger and mountain lion hunters use dogs in their searches because the lions are solitary and reclusive and can be difficult to find. Dellinger and his houndsman “cut sign”—“tracks and scat and other unique traces [the animals] leave on the land” (120). In classic estimations of animal populations, researchers use a formula based on the number of marked animals times the number captured in a second effort, divided by the number that were recaptured the second time. Dellinger, however, uses tracking collars, telemetry devices, and his ability to cut sign to count the mountain lions (122).

Dellinger takes the author out on a counting venture on his all-terrain vehicle (ATV). To find mountain lions, one needs to consider what they like: saddles (passes) through mountainous terrain, water, and food. As the lions’ preferred diet is deer, Dellinger goes to areas that offer tender new growth for deer to eat (124). A person skilled at cutting sign, as Dellinger is, can not only tell which animal made the track but which sex it is, when it was made, and whether the animal was in pursuit of prey or just traveling. Searching for tracks in the early morning is ideal because sunlight and heat degrade tracks. Scrapes are another useful sign—male lions kick back the duff layer under a pine to mark territory, and they usually do so facing the direction they are headed (129).

Another common method of learning about animal behavior and estimating populations is examining their scat, termed “droppings analysis” (131). Earlier naturalists and wildlife biologists would examine the stomach contents of certain species, but droppings analysis is easier and not harmful to the animal. Estimating populations by such a “pellet census” (132), however, can be highly inaccurate. Some animals travel in herds and defecate while moving, obscuring their numbers. The age of the feces can be difficult to determine, as evidenced by efforts to estimate the number of rats on a ship. What the rats ate and where on the ship (engine room or deck) they defecated greatly altered the drying and molding rate of the feces (133). Droppings analysis also requires that researchers know how much defecation is usual for a certain species in one day. In another instance, efforts to collect goat droppings altered their normal feeding behavior (134). Observations made in the wild can vary by season, depending on how much food is available for the animals to eat. The future of mountain lion counts may depend on scat, however, as genetic markers within it can provide information on individuals’ health (134).