Monkeys are N China air force base's new best friend

Want China Times, Andy Hung and Staff Reporter 2014-05-10

A macaque tearing down a nest. (Internet photo)

To cope with bird hazards, a major threat to flight safety at airports, China's air force has made significant headway with the extraordinary assistance of monkeys, reports our sister newspaper Want Daily.

At a military airbase in northern China, which runs smack into the flying route of several migrant birds, hundreds of nests can crop up overnight on a single tree in the areas bordering the base. The ground crew is forced to form bird-hunting squads to clear the nests and disperse the birds, but removal of the nests has proved to be a very tricky task. One nest could take a costly 10 bullets to remove, and sending a soldier up to take it down is dangerous.

Two months ago, one soldier came up with the idea of having monkeys remove the nests, remembering how good the monkeys back in his hometown in southern China were at removing bird nests atop trees. Now the sergeant on duty at the airbase rides an electric motorbike carrying a pair of trained monkeys to spots under trees, blows the whistle and sits back as the monkeys scramble quickly to the top and remove the nests. One monkey can typically clear six to eight nests a day, greatly reducing the number of birds which would otherwise be sucked into jet fighter engines.