Residents have been warned to lock windows and doors after 43 monkeys escaped from a research facility in South Carolina.
The troupe of female monkeys burst out of an Alpha Genesis building in Yemassee on Wednesday after a caretaker ‘failed to secure doors’, police said.
Greg Westergaard, CEO of Alpha Genesis, told CBS News: ‘It’s really like follow-the-leader. You see one go and the others go. It was a group of 50 and 7 stayed behind and 43 bolted out the door.’
Video shot from the road beside a wooded area shows the primates darting along the forest floor.
‘They are believed to be in the wooded region surrounding the facility’, police said in an update shared on social media on Thursday.
‘The staff at Alpha Genesis are currently attempting to entice the animals back using food in order to ensure their safe capture.’
In an effort to recapture them, traps and thermal imaging cameras have been set up in the area.
A spokesperson for the research company assured the public that the 3kg monkeys are ‘too young to carry disease’.
But they have been described as ‘skittish’, and their escape is enough of a concern for police to urge the public to ‘keep their doors and windows securely closed’.
They have been asked to report any sightings immediately.
Alpha Genesis uses monkeys for clinical trials, including for brain disease treatments.
These particular monkeys are too young to have already been used in testing, the company said.
Monkey escapes have happened before in this area, as recently as May this year.
Mr Westergaard said: ‘It does happen that one can sneak out once in a while. It is very unusual to have a big group like this.’
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