Rogue monkey evades police in Tokyo train station

Dozens of policemen with nets took two hours trying to catch a rogue monkey that played an excited game of chase through rush hour crowds in a Tokyo train station yesterday morning.

The animal was first noticed at 9.40am hopping around near the electronic ticket gates in the Shibuya Station in the middle of the Japanese capital.

It doesn't look dangerous to me.


Not content with its place by the gates, however, it darted downstairs towards the entrance to another train line before scaling a pillar and flitting between the ticket machines with officials in hot pursuit.

Bored with the game, it climbed onto an information board and dozed for a couple of hours while commuters and railway staff looked on. A little later railway staff and police cleared the area to being their attempt to catch the runaway monkey.

See the hysteria it caused.


Having surrounded the information board with green netting, they hoped to pounce on the animal as soon as it leapt from its perch.

But when it finally jumped down, it slipped through the police cordon, darted into the crowd and disappeared - apparently out of the station. "I've heard of mice before, but nothing like this," said a Tokoy Metro spokesman.