“Because of that barking sound…”: UP teen uses Alexa to save her and her sister from monkey attack

Basti (Uttar Pradesh) [India], April 6 (ANI): Nikita, a 13-year-old girl, who displayed presence of mind and fended off monkeys using an Alexa device at her home in the Basti district of Uttar Pradesh, said on Saturday that the simians started leaving the kitchen after they heard the sound of barking dog.

Nikita saved her and her infant sister when monkeys entered their home.

Narrating the incident, she said a few guests visited their home and they left the gate open.

“Monkeys entered the kitchen and started throwing things here and there. The kid was scared and so did I but then I saw Alexa and asked it to play the sound of a dog. Because of that barking sound, the monkeys were scared and ran away,” Nikita told ANI.

Nikita’s mother Shipra Ojha said that Nikita’s swift action saved both the girls from a monkey attack.

“Their lives were saved by good use of the Alexa device. We were in another room but due to the wisdom of daughter Nikita, she asked the Alexa to bring out the sound of a dog and hearing that the monkeys ran away,” she told ANI.

Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice interactive voice assistant.

Earlier in a similar incident in March, quick-thinking saved the life of a 12-year-old boy who had a chance encounter with a leopard that had wandered into a building in Nashik, Maharashtra.

In security footage from what was reportedly a wedding hall in Nashik, the animal who was walking in the street sauntered past the boy who was sitting on a couch in an office while he was playing a video game on a smartphone device.

The footage showed the boy quickly and calmly getting up from the couch, turning and shutting the door behind him, effectively trapping the predator in the room.

The leopard was later tranquillized and safely removed from the area.