This is the sad moment a disabled monkey with one arm is hit on the head by a piece of fruit thrown by a tourist and instantly responds by attacking a litter of kittens that it apparently believed were responsible for the blow.

The video starts with the monkey sitting with his back to the people when somebody throws a piece of hard fruit which bounces off the monkey’s head.

It instantly whirled around, apparently believing that the kittens on the ground behind the mother cat were to blame for the blow.

The monkey attacked the mother cat and the kittens, with people shouting to try and stop the fight involving the monkey and the cat on the outskirts of Ningbo which is a sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province in China.

One eyewitness said that the crowds were quite normal at the spot because the one-armed monkey was something of a celebrity, and people would turn up to feed the primate and offer it food.

However, the joker that threw the food upset the monkey and caused the attack on the kitten. It and the other kittens were only rescued when another tourist used a brolly to scare the monkey away, and then loaded the kittens inside before later returning them to the mother cat.

Staff later checked the injured kitten and said that it was badly hurt but they hoped it would survive as it was still being cared for with its mother.

Online commentators like ‘Yoyo Deer Max’ said: “Why don’t you take a photo of the animal that threw the thing and see what species it is?”

And user ‘Just Give You Hot Water’ said: “Which female monkey threw that thing?”

While the user ‘Huishi’ said: “This monkey is very cruel.”