Authorities announced Thursday that the final monkey, out of several that had escaped following a crash on a Mississippi highway, has been located and apprehended.
A resident who lives near the crash site called authorities to report the animal’s location and it was then “successfully recovered,” the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks said in a statement to The Associated Press.
The final escaped monkey from The Oct. 28 collision was apprehended after the truck overturned on Interstate 59. During the immediate period following the crash, authorities pursued and killed five of the monkeys. Footage captured by officers' body cameras depicted a chaotic scene as the primates, having broken free from their wooden enclosures, scurried across the grassy median of the interstate, with some heading towards passing vehicles and large trucks.
Civilians later shot and killed two additional monkeys that had escaped authorities near the crash location, stating they were defending their households and communities. Authorities had previously cautioned inhabitants against approaching the Rhesus monkeys,, noting their aggressive tendencies.
The last monkey on the loose was found Wednesday afternoon near a home in the Vossburg area, just east of where the truck had wrecked. Brandy Smith saw the monkey when her dog started barking, she told WDAM-TV. Her neighbors called 911. Workers from one of the companies that had been transporting the truckload of monkeys across the country arrived to tranquilize the monkey, Smith said.
The primates were kept at Tulane University's National Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, an institution that regularly supplies monkeys to scientific research organizations, as stated by the university. Tulane has asserted that it was not moving the monkeys and that they are not university property.
PreLabs, identifying itself on its website as an organization that supports biomedical research, stated that the animals were being legally moved to an authorized research center. They also mentioned that the monkeys did not have any recognized illnesses. Tulane reported that thirteen of the monkeys that survived reached their intended destination the previous week.
The escape offers a recent look at the secretive industry of animal research and the ways in which contracts requiring secrecy stop the public from learning crucial details about animal studies.