The attacks began on July 8 in the Ogori district of Yamaguchi prefecture in the southwest of the country. In the most serious incident, an infant was badly scratched after breaking into a family home. “I was vacuuming when I heard my child crying, so I turned around and saw that the monkey had grabbed her by the legs while she was playing on the floor. It looked like he was trying to drag her out,” the baby’s mother told local media. Last weekend, the monkey opened the door of a first-floor apartment and scratched the leg of a four-year-old girl, leaving her with minor injuries, before attacking other people nearby, Kyodo news agency reported. The monkey, said to be 40-50cm tall, also invaded a local kindergarten classroom and scratched a four-year-old girl. According to information, the local police are on alert. They have set traps for the animal and warned people not to leave their windows open. The local mayor’s office has distributed flyers telling local residents to be on the lookout, but as of Tuesday, the animal was still on the loose. Public broadcaster NHK said there have been about 40 monkey sightings in the area since May. They are not the only wild animals that have forced people in Japan to be more careful. In recent years there have been bear sightings and attacks across the country, along with smaller numbers involving wild boars, including an incident last year in which two of the animals injured half a dozen people in a Hiroshima park before being shot dead. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST The spate of bear sightings and attacks is attributed to the lack of oak trees in the animal’s natural habitat, forcing them to wander into populated areas in search of food. In desertified rural areas, the degradation of abandoned farmland that once formed a natural boundary between their habitat and populated areas is also a factor. On the northernmost main island of Hokkaido alone, the number of bear sightings rose to 2,197 last year, up 381 from the previous year. In 2020, a black bear spent more than 12 hours inside a shopping mall in Ishikawa Prefecture before being shot by a local hunter.
