Forty-Three Monkeys Are on the Loose in South Carolina After Escaping a Research Facility When a Door Was Left Unsecured
Once the first primate made a break, the 42 others followed suit in a simple case of monkey-see, monkey-do
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A troop of 43 monkeys is on the lam in South Carolina’s lowcountry after escaping from a research facility on Wednesday night.
The primates made a break for it when an employee at the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center in Yemassee, South Carolina, did not secure a door properly. After that, it was a simple case of monkey-see, monkey-do.
“It’s really like follow-the-leader. You see one go and the others go,” Greg Westergaard, CEO of Alpha Genesis, tells Stephen Smith of CBS News. “It was a group of 50, and seven stayed behind, and 43 bolted out the door.”
Unlike the mighty chimpanzee Caesar, who escapes from captivity in the Planet of the Apes trilogy, the troop on the loose consists of very young primates known as rhesus macaques—all female and each likely weighing just six to seven pounds.
“We’re not talking about Caesar,” Matthew Garnes, Yemassee town administrator, tells Michael DeWitt of Bluffton Today. “But if you spot any primates, don't approach or try to interact with them or feed them, call 911.”
Police working with Alpha Genesis have set up thermal imaging cameras and traps to re-capture the primates, telling the public in a statement on Thursday that they have eyes on the monkeys, and officials "are working to entice them with food."
A Friday afternoon update to the statement, posted by the Yemassee Police Department on Facebook, says the simians are “playfully exploring the perimeter fence” in the wooded area surrounding the facility, cooing to their primate pals in captivity. This behavior suggests the escapees are calm, “which is a positive indication,” per the police department.
Still, the monkeys’ goofy antics are making it tough for officials to recapture them. “They’re jumping down and taking the food and then jumping back up on the fence and the tree line,” Westergaard tells CBS News. “They’re watching us the same way we’re watching them. … It’s kind of like a playground situation here.”
Officials note the escaped monkeys do not pose a public health risk—they had not been used for testing due to their age, which also makes them too young to carry diseases.
Alpha Genesis, which first opened in 2003, breeds monkeys for research at government, university and industry facilities, often for medical purposes. Rhesus macaques’ physiological closeness to humans has long made them subjects of choice for human and animal health researchers, writes the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
Between two sites in South Carolina’s Beaufort and Hampton counties, Alpha Genesis houses approximately 5,000 monkeys, including “marmosets, cynomolgus and rhesus macaques, African Greens and several New World species,” reports Bluffton Today.
But this isn’t the first time monkeys have broken free in Yemassee.
In 2014, 26 monkeys escaped from the Alpha Genesis facility and were recaptured within 48 hours. Just two years later, 19 escaped and were returned within six hours. These escapes and other issues—including a group of monkeys killing another after it was put with the wrong social group—sparked a $12,600 fine on Alpha Genesis from the United States Department of Agriculture in 2018.
Alpha Genesis won a federal contract in 2023 to run a colony of 3,500 monkeys on Morgan Island off the coast of South Carolina, which locals call “Monkey Island.”
The primates on Morgan Island were introduced in the 1970s for biomedical research in local laboratories. “Passing boaters can often spot monkeys lounging on the shore and scampering up the island’s pines,” as Tony Bartelme and Shamira McCray of South Carolina’s Post & Courier wrote last year.
The escaped monkeys used to live on Morgan Island but were transferred to the Yemassee facility to acclimate to humans, reports CBS News.
Westergaard tells the publication that recovering the fugitive primates will be a long process. In the meantime, local police advised residents in the area to keep their doors and windows secured to prevent the animals from entering homes.