Apes on The Rock

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Abstract
Barbary macaques have been on Gibraltar continuously for 240 years, maybe longer. Today they are a major tourist attraction – 1000 people may visit them in a day. But they have caused much trouble in the past, raiding gardens, damaging houses, biting people. Since 1913, with few breaks, they have been fed regularly on the top of the Rock by the British Army. Numbers have fluctuated – in 1900 there were 130, in 1943 only four, which on Mr Churchill's instructions were increased by imports to 24. Today they are kept at between 30 and 40, and controlled by exports to zoos and culling, which the author, who is studying their adaptation to living with man, considers unacceptably wasteful.