JUST SPREAD A RUMOR IN CHINA THAT THEIR LIVERS AID VIRILITY:

Since 2007, the MCD has also been under court order to catch the monkeys that run amok through the city and to relocate them to a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of town.

But the MCD went back to court this week to say it cannot meet that responsibility because it can't hire monkey catchers, despite running dozens of newspaper advertisements and scouring the monkey-management world.

"In spite of all efforts, only one monkey catcher has turned up ... to undertake this work," the MCD said in its request to the court, according to The Indian Express. "This in turn has resulted in a lot of difficulties in dealing with the monkey menace."

Reliance on untrained labour means the monkeys are winning, the city said.

This is no joking matter. In 2007, the deputy mayor of Delhi, S.S. Bajwa, died of head injuries after he fell from his terrace: He was set upon by a troop of monkeys while reading the morning paper.

Monkeys are trapped but not killed here in part because of reverence for Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, and because a powerful animal-rights lobby insists they be humanely relocated.

Since 2007, the MCD says, it has relocated some 12,850 monkeys. But thousands more continue to leap in packs from rooftop to rooftop in residential areas - they have also shown a preference to colonize the area of New Delhi home to many government offices.

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