[Image: YouTube]
Just when you think you’ve seen everything the Mother City has to offer, a viral video of baboons and humans coexisting captures everyone’s hearts.
Forget the usual hooligan antics of baboons pulling off watermelon heists or breaking into your holiday home while you’re just trying to have a lekker, stress-free weekend. No, no—these days, we’ve got a whole new breed of baboons who seem to have swapped chaos for courtesy.
A video that’s been doing the rounds shows two baboons crossing the busy main road in Simon’s Town—not dashing like criminals on the run, but strutting like VIPs who know they’ve got right of way.
And the best part? A road patrol guard was on duty, making sure they got across safely, like an actual traffic cop. Just another typical day in the Western Cape, hey?
The footage was uploaded over the weekend by Instagram user @thecaperobyn and quickly gained attention. The caption read: “If you listen very carefully, you can hear Charles Darwin laughing.” It soon made its way to YouTube.
It’s the way the baboons wait for the traffic and the green light of the patrol officer that really tickles me.
This video has once again stirred up the never-ending debate about Cape Town’s love-hate relationship with its most notorious furry troublemakers—baboons.
Chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) are proper locals, native to southern Africa and a familiar sight on the Cape Peninsula, where they regularly cross paths (and sometimes weapons) with humans, notes The South African. They’re part of the Old World monkey family, and they’re some of the biggest and boldest in the game.
These guys are nothing if not adaptable, and with human development creeping further up the mountains, they’ve taken the “make yourself at home” approach quite literally—raiding gardens, rummaging through bins, and, when given half a chance, causing absolute mayhem inside houses. In December, a male baboon was even spotted as far up the peninsula as Sea Point—clearly, the oke had places to be.
In many cases, these baboons have been spotted acting more human than some of us—getting stuck into suburban life like they pay rates and taxes. Per IOL, one local shared a gem of a story:
“We use to be the owners of Lakeside Spar- Muizenberg. They came shopping on a regular basis, walking down Main Road with a loaf of bread under each arm.”
You know, just a quick sandwich run.
With baboons making themselves comfy in Cape Town’s suburbs, the city has been juggling both conflict and conservation, trying to find a way for humans and monkeys to live side by side without constant chaos.
Some encounters end in drama, but every now and then, you get a moment like this—where a human actually lends a hand to make sure the baboons cross the road safely. Who would’ve thought?
[Source: IOL]
