A rash of crimes by animals gets us thinking

The population was highly sceptical, since large sums of public money are not kept as bank notes so the animals would have had to arrange bank transfers, a bit of a challenge for any tiny-brained creatures such as snakes, monkeys, bacteria, nationalist politicians, newspaper columnists, etc. The officials probably chose such weak excuses because there have been a rash of animal-steals-stuff stories in the news recently. 

Consider what happened in Chonburi, Thailand, last month. A monkey stole a smartphone. The phone-owner’s friend Mongkol Wisulokanon pressed video call, hoping to surprise the monkey into dropping the phone. But the monkey answered the video call. The ape then sent the “bye-bye” emoji, which is a waving hand. Mongkol recorded screenshots of the exchange as proof. 

This is astonishing. Many adults couldn’t do such a thing without weeks of training by small children. This lends credence to the theory that some species (monkeys, dogs, dolphins, cats) are actually smarter than humans but hide the fact so that they don’t have to pay tax, wear clothes, work in offices, take out mortgages, etc. 

In 2012 a band of monkeys reportedly learned to understand Indian train platform announcements — again something few adults can do. They would wait for the echoing voice to make an announcement: “The next train to arrive at Platform Seven will be the 2.15 express”, and they’d gather for action. As passengers emerged on to the platform of Rajasthan’s Chittorgarh station, the monkeys would grab people’s bags. At the time, station bosses offered a cash prize of $365 to anyone who could think of a way of dealing with the problem, but they ignored my suggestion: Give them uniforms and call them porters. 

Another recent animal-as-thief story took place in New Zealand in January this year. Auckland resident Ed Williams got into trouble when his girlfriend found another woman’s underwear at his home. Ed swore he knew nothing about it. They later discovered his cat Mo stealing clothes from neighbours. 

A colleague reading over my shoulder liked the idea of blaming a cat for his love affairs, but I told him that blaming the lipstick on his collar on animals would just make his terrible reputation worse.