A two-week-old puppy had to be rescued from a wild monkey that had abducted and held it hostage for three days.
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The primate snatched the baby dog from a litter of stray puppies on Thursday and had taken it to the top of an electricity post in the town of Taman Lestari Putra in Malaysia.
Residents’ attention was drawn to the hostage situation, and they tried fruitlessly for days to rescue the pup.
Unlikely Friendship
According to onlookers, the primate did not appear to have any intention of hurting Saru, the adorable black and white puppy. One local resident at the scene Cherry Lew Yee Lee said:
The puppy looked tired and weary, but the monkey did not seem to hurt it. The monkey was just holding the puppy while it moved around. It looked like it was treating the puppy as a friend or its baby, it was very strange. However, we still needed to save the poor dog because it appeared to have been starving.
The Rescue
The locals tried several times to rescue Saru from its captor, but the macaque kept jumping between electricity posts and trees while holding the helpless pup in his arms.
The primate eventually let go of the dog after residents scared it by throwing things at it. The monkey dropped his hostage in a nearby bush and made a run for it into the trees.
Locals fed the dog and checked it for injuries. It was found to be in good physical state following his three-day ordeal at the hands of the monkey.
Saru has since been adopted by a local family and is currently settling into its new home.
The government of Malaysia receives around 3,800 complaints about the macaque monkeys every year. This informed the decision to cull some 70,000 monkeys annually between 2013 and 2016.
