Baboon Bandits: Monkey Alert in South Africa TV Listings

• 2011
• 0 hr 52 mins
• Documentary

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Up on Table Mountain's flat top which overlooks the city of Cape Town in South Africa, in a region that is surrounded by towns and residencies, 18 baboon families come into conflict with their human neighbours. Attraction to some, a nuisance to others, nevertheless, for the last 10 years, those animals are placed under strict protection despite the increasing annoyance, even though in the past, they used to be considered as pests and were hunted down. As a result, with the civilisation getting into their territory, the baboons gradually lost their inborn fears about human beings, and with a considerable height of 1.5m tall and 30kg of weight, they can really become dangerous. In particular, the alpha males of the infamous Smits Gang, which took its name from the Smitswinkel Bay, are proper criminals with remarkable skills in breaking and entering which can organise raids at flats after choosing the easy victims. In other words, Jimmy is a burglar and a loner, Long-Fingered Fred excels in breaking into cars, while Merlin prefers to target restaurants. In front of this simian menace, a special baboon monitoring team or "Baboon Police" has been assembled as a countermeasure against the agile offenders which prey on unaware and negligent tourists. In the end, it is important to realise that if humans manage to keep in check the baboon families and not spoil them by sharing their food, maybe, in the long run, there will be a chance for a peaceful coexistence.