Officials additionally rent greater than 30 ‘monkey-men to scare away the primates as international leaders make their method to New Delhi.

Life-size cutouts of langurs have been erected in a number of elements of New Delhi and groups of “monkey-men” have been employed to discourage marauding monkeys from munching on the floral shows laid out for the G20 summit next week.

New Delhi’s metropolis council has employed greater than 30 “monkey wallahs”, or “monkey-men”, who mimic the hoots and screams of the aggressive langur monkey – the pure enemy of the smaller rhesus macaque primates.

Rhesus monkeys are a menace in lots of areas of India’s capital, working throughout busy roads with out warning and sometimes attacking unsuspecting pedestrians or residents.

They additionally wreak havoc within the capital’s leafy authorities areas.

The langur – an even bigger primate with a black face – has generally been utilized by authorities within the metropolis to scare away monkeys, with the treatment already working properly on this occasion, officers mentioned.

“We can’t remove the monkeys from their natural habitat, so we have deployed a team of 30 to 40 men who are trained to scare away monkeys,” Satish Upadhyay, the vice chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council, mentioned on Wednesday.

“We will deploy one man each at the hotels where the delegates would be staying, as well as in places where monkey sightings have been reported.”

The Delhi metropolitan space, residence to roughly 30 million individuals, has been on an intense beautification drive since India assumed the G20 presidency final 12 months.

Police have readied a near-shutdown of the centre of the capital for the September 9-10 summit, with roads blocked and a vacation declared with companies shut.

In addition, authorities have began offering meals to monkeys in forested areas to make sure they don’t wander past the boundaries.

“We started placing these cutouts in the city over the last one week and are already seeing a positive impact. Monkeys have stopped going to the areas where these are present,” Upadhyay mentioned.

This just isn’t the primary time New Delhi has turned to langurs to resolve its monkey drawback throughout a significant worldwide occasion. Live langurs have been rented and placed on responsibility when the Commonwealth Games have been held within the metropolis in 2010.

The monkeys have additionally grow to be clever rapidly. When a plastic langur was arrange, enjoying recorded sounds of the animals, it lasted solely three days earlier than monkeys tore it to items.