INDORE: In a grisly indicator of just how merciless the summer of 2019 is, 15 monkeys in

’s Punjapura Range have been killed after losing to another band of monkeys in a fight for control of a pond.

This entire region has been baking in 45-plus heat for the past week.

Denied water, these monkeys died as their organs shut down due to dehydration. Shocked, the forest department is carrying out a behavioural study of monkeys in the region and has made water arrangements for the group that lost the fight.

A cowherd spotted the carcasses on Friday and rushed to the nearby beat office. The alarm went out and senior forest officers scrambled to the scene. Initial autopsy showed that all the monkeys died due to

and consequent multi-organ failure. Foresters were puzzled because a pond was close by. Then, they saw a bigger band of monkeys, numbering 50-60, seemingly guarding the pond.

“The water source was barely a few hundred meters from the cave where this group of monkeys lived. However, due to the dominance of another group, this group could not access the water source. To protect themselves from the heat, many monkeys entered the cave, but the rocks became hotter. Some of the weaker monkeys couldn’t get out of the cave, where they died,” DFO Dewas P N Mishra said.

Forest officials have made provisions of water,

and chickpeas for the defeated group. The carcasses were cremated, and viscera of some of the monkeys has been sent for forensic tests to Sagar to check for possible contagious infections.

There are five to six groups of monkeys in the region where the deaths occurred. Foresters are surprised that territorial fights, or as in this case, a fight over water, could get so violent among monkeys. The Punjapura forest range has other herbivores, including deer, but no other fatalities due to dehydration have been reported. Forest officials have set up night vision trap-cameras to study the behaviour of monkeys and to check if any other factor contributed to the deaths.