A baboon story similar to the bear and claw

Rob Keeble

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A story i grew up with in Africa about Baboons has a comparison to the bear and the milk can incident.

Now i will say up front i have no idea of the validity of this story or its ability to work.

But the story goes that a pumpkin farmer has issues with a troop of baboons that were damaging his crop. They like the pumpkin seeds. So what he did was to cu a hole in a few pumpkins big enough for the Baboon to get its hand in but not big enough to get it out when the hand was full of pumpkin seeds.

Story goes that the Baboon then ends up with the pumpkin stuck to its arm and does not think to open its hand to get it off. What happens after that is up to the farmer. There have been tales of painting them white and letting them go back to the troop and scare it off but i think that was even further from the truth. The story was way back when and in Afrikaans so i really cannot say if it was based on genuine facts or fiction.

I do know that primates will put their hands anywhere they can out of curiosity so i can see the pumpkin part being factual.
 
I have heard that this is used to trap smaller monkeys (for meat) in India, so it is probably true. I wish this would work with raccoons, which fill the evolutionary niche here that is occupied by monkeys in other parts of the world.
 
I have heard that this is used to trap smaller monkeys (for meat) in India, so it is probably true. I wish this would work with raccoons, which fill the evolutionary niche here that is occupied by monkeys in other parts of the world.

A .22 rifle works very well on thieving raccoons.
 
Jim so does a catapult :) There are a few out there that must have nightmares of their encounter with me on various occcassions :)

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As Roger stated, I am recalling a National Geographic film where smaller monkeys would get their hand stuck in a coconut because they would not open their fist and release the rice that had been placed their to trap them.
 
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