E'Mei Mountain monkeys have been busy keeping healthy recently and now many of them have regained nice slim figures with the help of experts.

     There are more than 300 monkeys on E'Mei Mountain. They swarm around tourists begging for food and sometimes stealing it from unaware tourists; a familiar scene at E'Mei.

    However, over the past few years, many tourists have complained that the monkeys at the E'Mei Mountain park are lazy, not sociable and move too slow.

    "They just waste their food, rob food from us and then throw it away," one of tourists wrote in an article online. Adding that "they are too fat and need go on a diet."

    "The monkeys are aggressive and are not intimate with tourists," a CCTV web site reported.

     Animal experts then came in and identified a weight problem with the monkeys. They blamed the fact that these monkeys didn't have to go out into the wild to find their own food.

    "To help deal with the problem, we have drawn up a special exercise plan," Hu Yongzhong, monkey trainer of E'Mei Mountain explained to CCTV.

   "Actually, the plan launched in 2000. In this diet plan, every day, one group of monkeys only is allowed to get food from tourists for two or three hours, and then they are driven back the mountain and another group comes in," he noted.

    In this way, these monkeys recover their wild characteristics. They begin to find their food such as wild fruits and bamboo shoots on the mountain by themselves.

   "The special exercise plan seems to be working so far," Hu said, adding that "in this natural protection area some groups of monkeys appear to be as mild as a lamb." Enditem