Creepy monkey caught trying to have sex with a deer
Scientists spot a macaque in the middle of an unspeakable act, almost certainly leading to the revocation of all his deer dinner party invitations.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Sometimes nature is so downright unnatural it's creepy. Take the male Japanese snow monkey (otherwise known as a macaque) caught trying to do the deed with a female sika deer.
Snow monkeys and sika deer live side by side, and it's not unusual for the monkeys to playfully ride the deer. But scientists think the hormonal surge they experience during breeding season may have led this frustrated guy in Japan to take things a bit further.
The macaque scientists spotted in the middle of this rarely documented monkey business can essentially be described as a social outlier who might have trouble getting laid.
"This macaque was a non-troop adult male, in other words low in hierarchy," Marie Pelé of the University of Strasbourg in France said in a statement. Pelé is lead author of a study on the odd behavior published online Tuesday in the journal Primates.
"He was therefore probably either peripheral or belonged to a group of peripheral males, as other males were observed in the vicinity of the deer."
In other words, this monkey appears to have been the alpha inter-species mega-perv among a gang of sketchy snow monkey dudes.
In case you're wondering, these deer hang with these monkeys to eat food they drop, as well as their poo (so yeah, deer can be weird too, depending on your perspective).
If you have it in you, you can watch the video below (not totally safe for work, BTW, but likely to be featured in the pilot episode of "To Catch a Predator: Simian Edition").
Also, if you must know: No, there was no actual penetration involved. That kind of extreme inter-species behavior is thought to have only been documented once. I really advise against clicking through that link if you don't want to forever ruin seals' cute and cuddly image.
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