Written by Kymberley Chu
The sky is blue and mostly clear with few clouds passing by. Birds chirp, dusky langurs cling to oil palm leaves and nibble on figs, a white-bellied sea eagle soars and flies over the park. In the foreground, multiple winding and steep moss-covered cement steps demarcate hiking trails to different parts of the dipterocarp forest. This is Cherok Tokun, a community park in Malaysia, where local residents, farmers, and domestic tourists hike, jog, do tai chi, and meditate in the tropical rainforest. Several of its hiking trails involve a trek to the overarching Mengkundor (Tetrameles nudiflora) tree and a vantage point where two red telecom towers overlook the lowland dipterocarp forest.
Cherok Tokun’s parking lot is another attraction. Rather than hiking, the parking lot is where park regulars will drive, watch, and feed long-tailed macaques in innovative ways. When observing and conversing with monkey feeders, some warmly expressed their closeness to these primates. Young macaques open up leftover fried chicken boxes, half-eaten bak chang (glutinous pork belly rice dumplings) bamboo wraps are discarded next to the large rubbish bin, and adult macaques chase each other. In the traditional conservation handbook of rules, this is a classic red-flag situation because of potential zoonotic transmission, roadkill incidents, primate physiological damage, and unhygienic waste dangers (Ilham 2023; Marty et al. 2019; Zhao 2005; Radhakrishna and Sinha 2011; Al Ghamdi et al. 2023)
However, despite the potential dangers, some people remained engaged in monkey feeding for diverse cultural, religious, and therapeutic reasons in Cherok Tokun. Although some traditional conservationists may focus on management strategies for provisioned primates, a recent paper pointed out that an ethnographic approach may understand the human dimensions of why people feed primates and provide holistic insight improving the efficiency of existing management strategies (Waters et al. 2025). What if we reframe the issue of monkey feeding (Waters and Hansen et al. 2026) as mutually part of and structurally shaped by a wide range of contemporary political systems and socioeconomic realities (Fuentes 2010; Fuentes and Wolfe 2010)? What if monkey feeding is not just an individual ‘red flag behavior’ but also part of a dynamic and complex socio-ecological system (Asquith 1989; Imanishi 2003)? In conservation approaches, monkey feeding is dominantly seen in the context of harms and focused on micromanaging individual human and monkey actions through intervention.
Interdisciplinary methodologies such as ethnography introduce the layered histories of why and how humans feed particular monkeys (Sinha et al. 2021; Ramakrishna et al. 2025). However, a dominant framing in conversations against direct provisioning is when scientists unidirectionally perceive community members as ‘passive information beneficiaries,’ not active agents who co-construct ecologies (Barua and Sinha 2017; Fuentes 2010; Fuentes et al. 2026). Specifically, a dominant approach would be using cost-driven model explanations that emphasize negative impacts of provisioning such as zoonotic transmission and littering (Waters and Hansen et al. 2026). Cost-driven language in public outreach such as stern warnings, antagonistic characterizations of individual actions, and punitive solutions may alienate and exacerbate interpersonal tensions with local community members (Chu 2024; Chu 2025). Although structural ecological impacts are important to highlight, when scientists intervene against direct provisioning, they have to be cognizant of how social relationships frame these conversations into an “uneven playing field”. Regardless of intentionality, information reception heuristics are mutually shaped by cultural perceptions of authority and local power dynamics.
When scientists actively intervene in direct provisioning, they disrupt intimate moments of social bonding park regulars have with monkeys. Scientists should be cognizant of how conflictual frames and antagonistic language can exacerbate the stress levels of public community members when their brief moments of therapeutic relief are interrupted. An interdisciplinary paper advocated for conservationist practitioners “to be cognisant of therapeutic dimensions in human-animal relations” (Barua et al. 2021).
In my ongoing dissertation fieldwork, I’ve listened as monkey feeders in Cherok Tokun open up about their emotional vulnerabilities that led them to direct provisioning. Some have expressed joy and other psychological wellbeing benefits in close proximity with primates as a coping mechanism in personal life issues and a mental health break from bustling metropolis life (Barua et al. 2021; Connolly 2019; Connolly 2021). Monkey feeders have told me various reasons why they feed, such as: “it is good karma to give back”, “to avoid food waste”, “我喜欢 laukau” (I love monkeys) and “剩下一点罢了，我喂完给它们啦” (There was only a bit left, I just gave them all). The monkey feeders gave diverse reasons such as having a free source of entertainment, contributing to community-based practices of waste disposal, and Buddhist religious expressions of practicing karma. Cultural explanations, religious practices, and physiological wellbeing are not just individual-level expressions or mental abstractions, they are relational processes that unevenly shape how people take action in human-primate interfaces.
In interventions, I’ve witnessed how scientists and monkey feeders abruptly end mutual dialogue when punitive-driven warnings are issued, individuals are antagonized, and specific behavioral actions are characterized in stigmatizing ways. Scientific communication (Fuentes 2024) is crucial for positioning public audiences as active information beneficiaries and community-based knowledge producers (Dajani and Glass et al 2025). As motorcycle exhaust engines roar amidst abrupt conversation endings, some monkey feeders have loosely characterized scientists as colonial surveillance units for ‘telling them off’ ‘watching them too closely’ and ‘asking them to commit an act of betrayal’ (Chu 2025, Chignell and Satterfield 2023). These social interactions with monkey feeders also illustrate the analytical, emotional, and physical toll on scientists. Perhaps, intervention-driven conversations have the potential to be rescripted from utilitarian goal-driven outcomes (e.g. micromanaging individual behaviors) to mutual and equitable-driven partnerships (e.g. park custodianship processes) (Chua et al. 2020).
“If you love (喜欢, xǐhuān) animals, if you are an animal lover, then we’ll cooperate (合作, hé zuò) with you,” a key ethnographic interlocutor said during an urban ecology workshop. This phrase resonated with me. What does it mean to navigate competing and contradicting expressions of loving animals (Candea 2010; Govindrajan 2018)? When conservationists intervene, they put on their ‘social worker’ hats with the public to discourage individual cases of monkey feeding. Often, conservationists who choose to engage in individual cases will have to contribute a lot of emotional labor involvement where it is not guaranteed monkey feeders will reciprocate their advice. In reframing these conversations, how can we mutually blend scientific knowledge and community wisdom for mutual coexistence between humans and primates, livelihoods and landscapes?
Acknowledgements:
I am deeply grateful to dissertation advisor Dr. Agustín Fuentes and mentor Dr. Malene Friis Hansen for our insightful conversations, especially on tackling monkey feeding as a structural issue and the consideration of holistic factors such as cost-funding models, urban participatory designs, and local development politics. Thank you to Dr. Rocío López de la Lama for her editorial feedback and showcasing my perspective.
My dissertation fieldwork has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 11070), the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University through the Mary and Randall Hack ‘69 Fund for Water Research.
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More about the author:
Kymberley Chu is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University and a visiting fellow at Monash University Malaysia. Her dissertation examines how citizen science projects shape and are shaped by the contemporary ‘shock externalities’ of uneven development such as land-use disputes, housing insecurity, and human-wildlife conflict in Malaysia. For more information, please visit her webpage at https://anthropology.princeton.edu/people/kymberley-chu and her Bluesky @dialecticprimates.bsky.social
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