Ravenous wild monkeys attacked market stalls during a festival in a Thai town.

Footage shows the primate troop climbing all over the booths draped with a cloth moments after the vendors had closed their stalls for the day in Lopburi province, Thailand on February 8.

Some of them entered the unmanned stalls as they searched the area for food, leaving some of the goods damaged or missing.

Exasperated locals have been left in fear by the increasingly unruly monkeys, that have become used to human contact. Hundreds of thousands of rival troops now thrive in the small town, some 110 miles north of the capital Bangkok.

Thailand's growing population of primates has become a problem as the animals are known to damage property, such as cars and buildings. Unafraid of the consequences, they have also started stealing food from tourists and locals.

Many provincial governments in Thailand have been lobbying for the removal of crab-eating macaques from the country's list of protected wildlife. The legal protections have been hampering efforts to curb the pillaging simians' ballooning numbers.

Meanwhile, the Thai government is taking steps to manage the monkey population in the country, including creating sanctuaries, mass sterilisation programs, educating the public on how to handle the animals properly, and relocating them to more suitable habitats.