Dozens of monkeys on the loose after escaping US research centre

A police chief in South Carolina says there is no “almost no danger” to the public after 43 monkeys escaped from a medical research lab. Photo / Yemassee Police Department

Police in South Carolina are on the hunt for 43 rhesus monkeys that escaped from a research facility on Wednesday.

The “skittish” animals, belonging to local primate research company Alpha Genesis, had been wandering the Yemassee area for about a day, the Yemassee Police Department said.

Authorities urged residents to keep their doors and windows locked to avoid an unexpected monkey encounter and not to interact if they see one. Officers are setting traps and using thermal-imaging cameras to catch the primates.

The escaped rhesus monkeys are all young and female, weighing about 3kg each. Because of their age and size, the monkeys had not yet been tested on and carried no disease, police said.

The Alpha Genesis facility breeds cynomolgus, rhesus and capuchin monkeys for government, university and private industry research projects. It has worked on vaccine development for decades, including projects related to the coronavirus vaccine.

Alpha Genesis, which opened in 2003, won a US$4.6 million ($7.6m) contract in 2020 to work with pathogen-free macaque monkey breeding colonies, according to procurement data released by the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.

The facility had at least four incidents where monkeys escaped enclosures between 2014 and 2016, the US Agriculture Department (USDA) says. In 2022, the facility received a warning from USDA citing further breaches of animal misconduct throughout that year.

Other areas of Lowcountry have also seen primates on the loose this year. Bradley, a Japanese macaque, escaped from a private habitat in Walterboro in May and was shot dead by a resident a few days later, according to Colleton County officials.