Remember that I was all jealous when E. went on an ill-fated scooter ride but got to see cute monkeys?

A few days ago, we went to Nandi Hills with a couple of friends and their amazing dog.  I expected a few monkeys here and there, but there were over 700 of them, they were everywhere!  It was awesome!!  A quick internet search shows they are bonnet macaques, a funny looking monkey with Spock ears, and very common in South India.  North India gets its own type of monkeys! (North v. South geographical battles exist here as well).

I was a bit concerned bringing a dog might be risky but our guide told us these monkeys would not attack, unless you have food they like, such as Slice (my favorite artificial mango drink).  We saw a lot of them eating mango pits or full ears of corn, so I believe they are fed on purpose.  There are also lots of stray dogs, who weren’t exactly friendly.  To a monkey, a dog on a leash was quite a novelty, and they came out of the trees to check him out.

 When the male monkey is fed up with your presence and wants you to go away, he shakes the branch he’s sitting on really hard and shows you his menacing teeth.  It does have a deterrent effect!

The mom and babies are adorable, tears, fleas, ticks and all.  We saw dozens of them.  These monkeys make a sound that resembles a French “rrrrrr”.  You can hear the mother’s different sounds on this video:

They are so smart.  One of them found a discarded bottle of Coke (not mine), either thrown out by a not so smart human, or picked up in a garbage can.  He tried to drink the liquid from the bottom of the bottle, since gravity forces liquid to stay at the bottom.  I had already seen a monkey do that at the Bannerghatta Park.

“Oh gravity, thou art a heartless bitch” (Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory).