Beastly good guests: welcome to the Monkey Buffet Festival

Lop Buri (Thailand) - In the famous monkey town of Lop Buri in Thailand, the local long-tailed macaques are allowed to fill their bellies once a year. Last weekend, the buffet in front of the monkey temple was reopened.

The banquet pays homage to the monkey god Hanuman, but it is also intended as a thank you to the animals for attracting so many tourists. The monkeys are a popular photo opportunity.

Mountains of artfully arranged fruit such as dragon fruit, mango and watermelon, as well as vegetables, sweets and savory snacks were once again piled up in the temple with its photogenic Khmer ruins and on the streets.

This time, the delicacies weighed more than 2,000 kilograms in total, as reported by "The Nation" newspaper.

The festival is seen as a kind of truce between humans and animals - because primates are not only considered a blessing, but often also a curse.

Significantly fewer macaques took part in the 36th Monkey Festival than in the past.

The reason: the cheeky and sometimes aggressive Javan monkeys, as the animals are also known, had increasingly become a nuisance. Whole gangs of primates were causing serious damage, looting stores and causing short circuits.

This year, the authorities took action: Numerous animals have been captured, registered, sterilized and then relocated to a special enclosure since May, according to the Bangkok Post newspaper.

The wild population has decreased significantly since then.