Monkey business happening in the city over the weekend
Some monkey business was happening in the city over the weekend when the electricity went out on Saturday afternoon.
DA councillor Tersia Marshall said the Delta area had an outage in ward 16 and 17. “The electricity went out in Ehmke and Ferreira streets and in the Steiltes area. They sent people out to investigate what had happened at the substation and discovered that a vervet monkey was electrocuted on the wires there.”
She said during winter more monkeys entered the city looking for food. “We get more reports of them going into houses or rummaging through garbage this time of year.”
According to her, a nursery school had reported an influx of monkeys on their premises and they were spotted in Jan Frederick Street in Stonehenge.
Here are some facts about vervet monkeys:
• They are omnivores, eating both plants and meat. Their diet is based on leaves, buds, shoots, flowers, fruit, roots, insects, eggs, grubs and small birds.
• They live in groups (troops, tribes or cartloads) of 10 to 50 animals. Each troop consists of adult females and immature offspring. Adult males visit troops from time to time to socialize and reproduce.
• Vervet monkeys spend a few hours each day grooming (removing parasites and dirt from their fur).
• They whistle, scream and squeal to alert other members of the group about danger.
• Vervet monkeys usually breed from April to June. Pregnancy in females lasts 165 days and ends with one baby. They have a pink face and black fur at birth. The baby spends its first week of its life firmly attached to the mother’s belly.
• Genetically related females often take part in rearing of the infants.
• Vervet monkeys are playful creatures. Young monkeys like to wrestle and test their own stability by pushing each other from the branches.
• Vervet monkeys can survive 12 years in the wild and up to 24 years in the captivity.
