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Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

I'd bet a pair of them could pick up and throw a human; if they could get the co-ordination right.

50lbs of dog is a bad opponent for a human, 2 of them and humans lose that fight fairly often. Some of the dogs in the video I saw were that size and larger; so if the monkeys can harass and herd them effectively then I'd expect them to be able to do it to a human as well.

A human prepared to fight and ready to start killing things is a completely different matter; but I don't think these critters have encountered that yet. They're probably about to.

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The article said the humans have "culled" about 1000 of the monkeys. It's interesting that we use different euphemisms depending on who's doing the killing.

We have different words for different types of killing. We say “slaughter” when we’re talking about killing a farm animal for food, and “cull” when talking about killing animals for the purpose of population management. Likewise we have “murder” for intentionally killing a person vs “manslaughter” for an accidental/less-culpable killing, and “euthanise” to describe killing something that is already dying so as to end its suffering.

What the article describes is accurately described as culling, or killing for population control.

culling actually means selecting out from a group on the basis of some criteria.

harvested lobsters with one claw have less commercial value so they are separated out. They are sold more cheaply and called "culls". A difficult entry level university course in an academic department like Chemical Engineering could be used to cull the class of students down to only those who are serious about pursuing the field; in such a case, the culls are not killed.

it's the nature of metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy that the word cull can take on extra meanings depending on the context.

In Malaysia not in India. In India, laws don't allow killing of even rabis infested dogs forget about monkeys. Not to mention monkeys are considered sacred.

IMO they don't need to be "culling," which would imply more "humane" means of killing like rifle shots or poisons. They need to go out and kill some monkeys in full sight of the other monkeys, in a personal and ugly way that the moneys understand. Swords and clubs time. Hang bits of the victims where the rest of them hang out.

Works for coyotes.

Drag them down to our level and beat them with experience:-D

pour les encourager les autres

The same term is used for cattle. I guess species at the top of the food chain choose the terms of art. I wouldn't be surprised, though, to learn that the monkeys have their own sound/ utterance to mean the killing of people.

What do you mean same is used for cattle?

He means “cull” is a term we use for killing cattle.

That's not precisely correct. With respect to cattle or any other domesticated ungulates, "culling" means removing from the herd. That might occasionally be slaughter, but usually means selling the animal. Of course the new owner might buy the animal in order to slaughter it, but we can't assume that.

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