Siem Reap, Cambodia (AP) — 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 another 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 nowadays it is treated like a pet,” said Long Kosal, a spokesman for APSARA, the Cambodian work center that oversees the Angkor archaeological site. Creating content to make money by having an audience on YouTube, so it’s a big challenge for us. “
APSARA has little equipment to save YouTubers from filming in general, but has opened an investigation with the Ministry of Agriculture to gather evidence for the prosecution of the most serious abusers, 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. “
Cambodia’s war on animal abusers on YouTube has been noticed elsewhere in Asia, and last year a global network accused of generating and broadcasting horrific videos of monkeys being tortured and even killed was revealed through an investigation by the BBC World Service. At least 20 other people in the U. S. and two in Indonesia have been investigated, with an Oregon man indicted in June 2023.
The research found that many consumers in the U. S. The U. S. and other countries had joined social media teams accustomed to sharing disturbing and paid content to watch the torture of long-tailed macaques, even calling for an explicit bureaucracy of abuse.
Videos from YouTube, Facebook, and other sites with graphic content, but dozens of other clips of cute jumping monkeys and gambling remain on the platforms, generating thousands of prospects and subscribers.
However, just making those videos leads to a very close interaction with the monkeys, which the government and animal rights activists say creates a host of other problems, both for the macaques and for visitors to 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 through YouTubers and drank water from plastic bottles. A young macaque laughed at a half-eaten neon green ice cream, tossed on the side of the road, before dropping it to transfer it to a banana. .
An APSARA guard in a blue shirt watched, but those filming were unfazed, illustrating the main problem: It’s OK to film monkeys, even if feeding them is frowned upon. At the same time, this makes them dependent on help, and the close interaction with humans means they are increasingly competitive with tourists.
“Tourists take their food and grab it,” Long Kosal said, flipping through several photographs of the macaques’ recent injuries 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 they need is 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 for so many tourists to 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 acclimatize too much. “
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 said. 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, so it was highly unlikely he would 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 outdoor art 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, as well as raising cash 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 rescue and care for the Wildlife Alliance (which implements conservation systems across Southeast Asia and helps release animals in 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. “