For the last fifty years, Ernest has cared for this tribe of tail-less rock apes.
The apes are not exactly apes. They are monkeys - tail-less macaques, origin Morocco. Nobody knows exactly how they arrived on the peninsula, although theories abound. Many say they were brought here by Arab or Berber pirates in the fourteenth century. Others insist they were a tribe from the Baltic, pushed back to the edge of Europe by the Ice Age.
Some have more unusual explanations. In 1920, a journalist for the London Daily Mail wrote, "Well-known monkeys are absent for months, and then reappear with new, strange, adult monkeys of a similar breed. Those who know Gibraltar will agree that there is not a square yard on the Rock where they could have hidden." The author insisted that the only explanation was a submarine tunnel underneath the Mediterranean, connecting the African dens to Gibraltar.
facebook
twitter