Truckload of ‘aggressive’ lab monkeys escape after crash in US; one still missing
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The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said that the monkeys carried “hepatitis C, herpes and Covid”.
PHOTO: JASPER COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE/FACEBOOK
The authorities in the US are on the hunt for a rhesus monkey, which was among some that escaped after a truck hauling research primates from Tulane University in New Orleans flipped on a Mississippi highway on Oct 28.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post that the monkeys weigh “approximately 40lbs (18kg), they are aggressive to humans and they require PPE (personal protective equipment) to handle”.
The sheriff’s office also said that the monkeys carried “hepatitis C, herpes and Covid”, although Tulane University later clarified in a statement that they were not infectious and “belonged to another entity”.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office later said in an update that “all but one of the escaped monkeys have been destroyed”, and that they were continuing to look for the ape that was still on the loose.
It added that officials from Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries, the state’s conservation agency, were aiding their search, and that Tulane University would send a team to pick up the monkeys that did not escape from the truck.
Neither the sheriff’s office nor the university said how many monkeys were on the truck, how many escaped or how many were killed.
Fox News quoted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) senior vice-president Kathy Guillermo as saying that “terrified monkeys running for their lives into unprotected, populated areas is exactly the spark that could ignite the next pandemic”.
“Monkeys can carry diseases transmissible to humans, including tuberculosis, and Tulane National Primate Research Centre, where these monkeys were trucked from, has had disease outbreaks of pathogens deadly to humans in its monkey colony,” said Ms Guillermo.
“This is the risk the greedy monkey experimentation industry has chosen for the public, so they can line their pockets while these sensitive monkeys crisscross American highways in unmarked trucks.”
She also called for an end to the import and use of monkeys in lab experiments, lamenting that the monkeys who escaped were ones “whose only moments of freedom before death were the result of a truck crash”.
