Monkeys in India break into hospital after mastering automatic doors

Monkeys are threatening to overrun India’s top hospital after learning how to operate the newly-installed automatic doors. Doctors at the flagship All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi said the horde of red-bottomed rhesus macaque monkeys – who have roamed the sprawling campus for decades – had figured out how to let themselves into wards through motion-censor doors.

The compromised wards include the neurosurgery department and nearby patient recovery rooms, which the monkeys often invade, snatching food, terrorising medical staff and playing around with sensitive equipment.



They also creating bedlam outside one of the operation theatres, and when chased away by the hospital security staff hide themselves in the false ceiling only to re-emerge when the coast was clear to continue their chaotic activity.

“Some of these monkeys make their way into the wards. At least one monkey bite case is reported in the hospital every week,” Debjyoti Karmakar head of the resident doctors association said. AIIMS spokesman Y K Gupta, said that the hospital had hired two grey langurs – another larger breed of monkey = to chase the marauding macaque monkeys away from the wards and residential areas.