January 2013. Conflicting press reports about macaque breaching  embassy security

A macaque had found its way into the U. S. embassy compound in Colombo on 20 December, 2012, and caught the attention of the leading newspaper in the American capital, the Washington Post, which ran three different articles on the event.  Sri Lankan newspapers, The Sunday Times and The Island, too, picked up the story.  All papers agree that a macaque monkey was found inside the embassy compound without triggering any security alarms.  Embassy staffers secured their offices from the intruder and alerted their own marine guards as well as the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC).  According to the Post, the U. S. marines chased the monkey into the adjoining compound – the British High Commission, but the Sri Lankan papers credited the DWC with restraining the panicked marines, capturing the tranquilized monkey and setting it free in the wild.

While newspaper reports appear to be serving different political needs, I herewith offer my own point of view.  Despite the fact that toque macaques are an endemic species, the Sri Lankan government had recently declared the species as a pest and, at the cost of millions of rupees, had distributed guns to the public to shoot macaques (a fact). Toque macaques are being persecuted in a most shoddy manner in this Buddhist country!  I suggest that this intrusive monkey most likely was an escaped or evicted pet from a Colombo residence where it had learned about its intended genocidal fate and sought asylum in the U. S. embassy.  Having been denied refuge by the Americans, it tried its luck with the Brits.

Wolfgang Dittus, PhD
Primatologist