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A specially-trained monkey nicknamed Rambo has cleared two Indian government departments of an army of annoying apes.
Rambo used aggressive tactics to get rid of the monkeys at the Ministries of Health and Urban Development in New Delhi.
He has been snarling at the monkeys before running at them, and even getting involved in bloody fights.
Officials say employees can now walk around freely, no longer scared of being set upon by the monkeys, which would terrorise and bite workers, smash windows, tear up files and steal lunch boxes.
Previously, authorities built fences, laced bananas with tranquillisers and even brought in professional catchers - all to no avail.
They could not shoot the monkeys because the Hindu religion associates them with Hanuman, the mythical monkey god who helped Lord Rama beat Ravana, the evil king.
New Delhi monkeys are known to live in the Prime Minister's Office and the All India Institute of Medical Science, where they chase nurses and patients down corridors.
Doctors say patients often wake up after their operations to find a monkey sharing their bed or playing with their glucose or blood transfusion drip.
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The monkey went peacefully. It was the humans who went ape.
Friends of a 9-pound Capuchin monkey got into a fur fight Monday when city animal control officers arrived at an office with a warrant to take 5-year-old Winston into custody.
Workers at Public Strategies, a public-relations firm, yelled, screamed and cried. One employee bumped an officer with her chest and pinned him against the transport truck, police said.
"You don't understand," Mary Myrick, who owns the firm and the monkey, told police. "This monkey had a nanny, for God's sake."
The problem began when Myrick took Winston with her to a Home Depot store last Saturday. Some people came up and asked to pet Winston, and did so without any trouble, Myrick said.
When the group was about to leave, Winston "nipped" a teenager on the back of the leg, she said. Myrick said the bite wasn't serious, although animal control officers said it broke the skin.
During Monday's altercation, officers told Myrick that Winston would not be harmed and that she could stay with him at the shelter until his release.
Winston was taken to the shelter and tested, police said. Test results and additional information about the victim were not available.
PARIS -- With pitbulls, dobermans and rottweilers under fire from the French authorities, youth gangs in the depressed city suburbs have discovered an alternative way to intimidate their rivals - with attack monkeys.
"They're ultra-fashionable," said Didier Lecourbe, a police officer from the depressed Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. "There are dozens of them. Kids take them out on leads, and even carry baby monkeys around in nappies. But these animals can be very dangerous indeed."
Imported illegally through Spain from Gibraltar, Morocco or Algeria, the Barbary apes are known for their powerful limbs, sharp teeth and short tempers. Veterinary experts say they can be turned into frightening and effective weapons.
"They live naturally on rocks or in a desert environment," said Marie-Claude Bomsel of the natural history museum in Paris. "Removed from their natural habitat, they can become highly aggressive. They bite, and their favoured method of attack is to hurl themselves at people's heads."
Police believe as many as 500 Barbary apes may have been smuggled into France in the past two years. Bought for about £30 each by youngsters visiting their families in north Africa, they change hands on the council estates around Paris for as much as £300.
"Now the authorities have cracked down on pitbulls and the rest, apes look like becoming the new weapon of choice," said Mr Lecourbe. "We've heard of monkey-fights being run in tower block basements."
Ms Bomsel said the museum had received dozens of telephone calls from owners wanting to know how to deal with violent monkeys, or how to get rid of them. "The zoos don't want to know because apes that have grown up outside their natural environment will not live with others," she said. A spokeswoman for the the society for the protection of animals said the society had taken in more than 40 apes in the past 18 months and its Paris animal homes were full.
WASHINGTON -- A trio of monkeys threw bananas and crabapples at vehicles on the main interstate highway on the East Coast, a Virginia state police spokeswoman said.
The monkeys, described by police as brownish-gray, skinny and between two and three feet tall, were seen by drivers last Sunday along a stretch of Interstate 95 close to the Virginia-North Carolina border.
No one was injured, though several vehicle windows were smeared with fruit.
Virginia state trooper Mike Scott was alerted to the renegade primates when he noticed a vehicle on the shoulder of I-95 north of the small town of Jarratt, Virginia, around 9:30 a.m. Sunday, according to spokeswoman Corinne Geller.
He saw what looked like a banana smeared on the rear window and when he approached the car, he found the driver with a cellphone in her hand and a strange expression on her face, Geller said.
``You might think I'm crazy, but I think two monkeys threw a banana at my car,'' the driver told Scott.
Interstate 95, which stretches from Maine to Florida, is known for high-speed truck traffic and lengthy areas of congestion, not for marauding monkeys.
The driver said she was a paleontologist who takes pictures of primates and she told Scott, ``I'm pretty sure those were monkeys about a mile south of here.''
Sure enough, a mile to the south, Scott found two more vehicles pulled to the side of the highway's northbound lanes, and a small crowd looking into the trees along the side.
They were searching for the monkeys that hit them.
``And just about that time a crabapple comes out of the trees and hits one of the vehicles,'' Geller said.
Scott then saw the three miscreants, before they ran across the interstate.
He and another trooper pursued them, as the monkeys swung from tree to tree, she said. But the three split up then and the troopers lost them in the underbrush.
DELHI, India -- Authorities in the Indian capital Delhi have come under new pressure to bring the city's large population of monkeys under control, after a man was killed by a falling flower-pot apparently thrown or pushed from a roof by a monkey.
There are an estimated 5,000-7,000 wild monkeys roaming the streets of Delhi and all earlier attempts to control them have failed.
Relatives of 48-year-old Arvind Kumar Jha said he was struck by a falling flower-pot after leaving a high-rise apartment building where his family owned a flat. Witnesses say a monkey on the roof of the building pushed at least two pots over the edge. One of them hit Mr Jha on the head, killing him instantly.
Press reports on the incident say there have been many complaints in the area about the increasingly bold and dangerous behaviour of local monkeys.
A doctor was quoted as saying he treated about 15 monkey bites every month.
The wild monkeys are an acute problem for the city authorities. Aside from biting people, they destroy property, get into houses and offices and wreak havoc, and steal food from picnickers and street vendors.
The monkey is a sacred animals [sic] to Hindus, so culling the beasts is not an option.
Attempts to round them up and ship them to a distant spot in the countryside have failed, as the monkeys always come back.
Animal rights activists blame loss of habitat and the paving of city parks and forest reserves for the monkey problems of the city.
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Thirsty monkeys in drought-affected eastern Kenya stoned to death a herder watering his livestock, a local newspaper reported Thursday.
Ali Adam Hussein and other herdsmen had stopped to water their cattle at a pool in the northeastern Wajir district on Saturday when a group of wild monkeys attacked them with stones, the independent daily East African Standard said.
Hussein died from severe head injuries after he was transferred to a dispensary in Ajawa, the newspaper quoted Abdi Gosho, a nurse in the village, as saying.
Attempts to confirm the story were unsuccessful. Police in Wajir, contacted by telephone from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, had no information about the alleged incident.
The report did not specify what kind of monkey carried out the purported attack. Baboons have been known to throw objects at rivals.
NEW DELHI, India -- The tradition of political protests in India's only Communist-ruled state took a beastly turn when a pack of furious monkeys reportedly stormed a West Bengal police station.
More than 50 primates shrieked outside the station for hours after a schoolteacher in the state capital Calcutta shot and killed a monkey that entered his garden, the Telegraph newspaper reported Wednesday.
The wounded monkey hobbled to the police station and lay there. Neighbors took it to a veterinary clinic, where it died. When the dead monkey was brought back to the police station, the dozens of monkeys gathered and shrieked outside.
Apparently moved, a Communist Party politician filed a formal complaint with the police asking them to arrest the teacher. The newpaper said police had not taken action.
CENTERTON -- Gomer and Glory Alsup have finally come to grips with the thing that lives on the roof of their barn, even if it is ugly, eats too much cat food, and peeks through their living room window.
"My husband's adopted him," Glory said Tuesday of their "pet" Rhesus macaque monkey who took up residence in the Alsups' barn months ago. The couple assumed the monkey had escaped from the Wild Wilderness Animal Safari in Gentry. A Spokesperson from the Safari, however, denied that the animal escaped from that facility.
"He makes me so mad," Glory said of the monkey. "He'll look through the windows and grins with a face that will stop a clock. He sits on the tractor and acts as if he's driving it down the road. He pets the cows. He loves the dogs. He just does everything. Oh ... he's a good one," Glory said.
Gomer now calls the monkey "Albert" because, as Glory put it, the animal simply looked like an Albert.
In the beginning, the monkey acted much like a monkey would in the wild. He would swing from branch to branch, but steer well clear of the Alsups' household.
Albert soon took a liking to the Alsups' barn, however, which was warm and cozy at night. Inside the barn, he acquired a taste for cat food, much to the cats' chagrin. Then Albert became best friends with the Alsups' bull, sometimes using the animal's broad back to help bounce him from trees to the ground.
It was this friendship with the bull, Glory said, which helped Albert grow more confident around her and Gomer.
Albert snatches up apples, bananas and lettuce that Glory throws in the backyard for the animal. Unless the day is cloudy or rainy, Albert will usually venture out to snack on the fruit in front of Gomer, Glory and whoever decides to stop from the road and gawk.
Albert has stood just inches from Gomer inside the dog pen when he was feeding the dogs. Sometimes Albert will spend hours inside the pen, Glory said, riding atop the dogs.
On Monday morning, Albert was seen sitting on the family tractor, gripping the wheel as if planning to take a ride into nearby Bentonville.
Glory said her husband has taken quite a shining to the monkey.
"My husband's adopted him; he's just a lover of animals and he just loves that monkey," she said.
Glory said she tolerates Albert -- admitting she's often tickled by the animal's stunts in the yard. But still, there are some reservations. After all, the animal is wild.
"There's no sense of being afraid of him. I guess I'm getting used to him," Glory said.
"He's still ugly, though," she said with a chuckle.
The Chisms lost a special member of their family Thursday when an environmental court judge told them they couldn't keep their pet monkey.
Dewey Chism pleaded guilty to keeping a wild animal inside the city limits and was fined \$50. He says the law's classification of a wild animal is unfair.
"She is not a wild animal, my baby has never bitten anybody, she's never even tried to bite anybody," said Chism after Judge David Stewart's verdict Thursday.
Ashley, a fluffy, 5-year-old snow macaque monkey, has been sent to live with her original owners in Pleasant Hills, Mo.
City, county and state ordinances prohibit primates as pets. Chism had also faced charges of cruelty to animals, failure to comply, and interference with law enforcement, but the city dropped the charges.
Monkeys can carry diseases. Fifty percent of macaques carry the meningoencephalitis virus, according to state Department of Health estimates. Ashley tested negative for the virus.
Animal Services manager Rita Cavenaugh said the monkey cost animal services $225 in veterinary and boarding expenses because animal services had no equipment to house the monkey when it was first seized last year. Cavenaugh asked Stewart about recovering the funds.
"The city's going to have to eat that expense," Stewart said.
Chism's mother, Betty, said that when they took Ashley to Missouri a few days ago, the monkey recognized her original owners from her youth and "ran into their arms." "She actually remembered them," Betty Chism said.
Dewey Chism said he's going to do everything he can to get his "baby girl" back to Little Rock, which may mean asking the city for a special permit.
Hundreds of wild monkeys began raiding villages in northeastern Thailand after local governments ran out of money to feed them. "They take whatever they can," said one local official. "They can bite if you resist."