Authorities have warned residents in South Carolina to lock their doors and close their windows, after more than 40 monkeys escaped a research facility and are running loose while police attempt to round them up.
The Yemassee Police Department confirmed in a Facebook post Thursday that 43 rhesus macaque escaped the Alpha Genesis facility in Beaufort County the previous day.
The primates, all “very young” females weighing approximately six or seven pounds, have never been used for testing and police said they confirmed with Alpha Genesis that the animals are too young to carry disease.
“Alpha Genesis currently have eyes on the primates and are working to entice them with food,” police said Thursday afternoon, adding that they’re supplementing their search efforts with traps and thermal imaging.
“Residents are strongly advised to keep doors and windows secured to prevent these animals from entering homes,” police wrote. Anyone who finds a monkey should not interact with it but instead call 911, it said, warning that the monkeys can be “skittish and any additional noise or movement could hinder their safe capture.”
As of Thursday afternoon, none of the animals had been captured.
According to ABC News, Yemassee Town Administrator Matthew Garnes confirmed that the fugitive monkeys escaped when a new employee at the Alpha Genesis center left the door to their enclosure open.
Garnes told town officials that police don’t expect the animals to have travelled very far.
In an interview with CBS News Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard called the escape “frustrating.”
“It’s really like follow-the-leader. You see one go and the others go,” Westergaard said. “It was a group of 50 and 7 stayed behind and 43 bolted out the door.”
He added that he hopes the monkeys decide to return on their own.
Alpha Genesis, according to its website, breeds monkeys and primates and provides “nonhuman primate products and bio-research services,” including plasma, serum, tissue samples and whole blood.
Local newspaper Post and Courier reported that monkeys have gone missing from the facility before — eight years ago, 19 primates made a break for it, but all were recaptured within six hours.