Forty-three monkeys are on the loose in South Carolina after breaking out of a medical research facility.
Residents in Yemassee, a town of 1,000 less than 50 miles west of Charleston, have been told to lock their doors and windows to prevent the primates from entering their homes.
The animals escaped from the Alpha Genesis facility on Wednesday evening, a center that tests experimental drugs and vaccines for various illnesses, infectious diseases and disorders.
Police said none of the monkeys had been caught as of this morning and claimed there was ‘no health risk’ to the public
It comes after three primates escaped from a vehicle carrying them to the lab in 2022 following a road accident. A monkey also escaped from the same center in 2016 after its cage was not properly locked.
One person said on X, formerly Twitter: ‘The monkeys escape from Yemassee every year. That s*** happens every year! The workers forget to lock up the cages and they go crazy!’
Police in Yemassee have now deployed traps and thermal cameras in an attempt to apprehend the escaped primates.
The facility says online that it works with both macaque and capuchin monkeys.
Revealing the escape, the local sheriff Department said on Facebook: ‘Residents are strongly advised to keep doors and windows secured to prevent these animals from entering homes.
‘If you spot any of the escaped animals, please contact 911 immediately and refrain from approaching them.’
The primates were housed in a facility on Castle Road in the town of Yemassee. Alpha Genesis also runs another center for housing monkeys on Morgan Island, just off the coast of South Carolina.
Alpha Genesis houses more than 6,000 monkeys at any given time which are used in clinical research.
The monkey’s are rhesus macaques, a highly adaptable species native to South, Central and Southeast Asia. In the wild, they live in a variety of habitats including forests, grasslands and urban areas.
In June 2018, it was fined $12,000 by the federal government over six violations — four of which involved escapes from the facility.
The first occasion was in 2014, when 26 monkeys escaped and were on the loose for 48 hours.
Just a week later a single monkey escaped and was never found.
Two more monkeys escaped six months later and then one died from internal injuries that occurred after it was shot with a dart during its recapture.
And in 2016, another monkey escaped because its cage was secured with a clip rather than a lock.
There were also two other violations, including one monkey being placed in the wrong social group, leading to it being attacked and suffering from fatal internal injuries, and an incident where at least six monkeys suffered from severe dehydration.
