Results shown in Table 3 revealed that rhesus are distributed in diverse categories of habitat;
from road side to temple premises. It can be observed that maximum numbers of rhesus were
found in urban areas. Aligarh city supports 1988 individuals of rhesus monkey distributed in
43 groups. It seems that people of urban areas are well aware about the protection provided to
rhesus monkeys by wild life protection act (WPA, 1972), so that they don’t want to hurt or
kill them. Rhesus macaques are kept in schedule III of WPA (1972) and its killing/hunting is
punishable. However, other habitats are also supporting fairly good number of rhesus
monkeys. Besides high natality and low mortality, religious attachment of local people with
rhesus is one of other reasons for their high population. Orthodox Hindus consider monkeys
to be sacred animals, to be revered and protected. This reverence stems partly from the role of
the monkey god, hanuman, in the Ramayana Hindu Sanskrit epic. This may be the reason that
even six monkey groups comprised of 366 individuals were protected in the temple premises.
It was observed that people visiting the temple, offer foods to monkeys residing in the temple
premises. Furthermore, study revealed that villagers and farmers have developed tolerance
attitudes towards monkey menaces and crop damages, and due to this people are accepting
monkey presence in their village surroundings and croplands. About 270 monkeys (in 4
groups) were recorded from agriculture area where as 328 (in 10 groups) from village side.
Since canal and road side provides shelter and supplement food supply from by passers,
monkeys have made these sites as their home and probably due to these reasons 382 monkeys
were found on canal side and 647 on road side. Not only this, even 70 monkeys were
recorded during survey from railway station also. However, this group can be considered as
strolling group and they may have come to this site in search of new pasture.