Uhh holy shit, did you guys know that monkeys will rip the things you love out of your arms and keep them hostage until you pay them with food?
“The monkeys have been stealing all sorts of stuff,” explains Chris Packham, host of my new favorite show, BBC’s World’s Sneakiest Animals. “Flip flops, sunglasses, people’s hats, I’m told they even knick their iPhones.”
In the clip, Packham explains that these particular monkeys—Indonesian long-tailed macaques, filmed at the Uluwatu Temple in Bali—don’t actually want these things, they want food; to test this, he lets a monkey take his iPhone, and gets it back by trading some eggs. In other words, they understand what is valuable to (tourist) humans, and exploit that to benefit themselves. IT IS CRAZY.