© Nick Kontis/Special to USA TODAY, USA TODAY via Imagn Content Services, LLC
(Yemassee, SC) — Animal control workers are trying to round up dozens of monkeys that escaped a primate research center in South Carolina on Wednesday. A homeowner near the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center in Yemassee, says he was shocked to see a monkey in a tree outside his house. The local police department says 43 rhesus macaques escaped when a worker may have left a gate or door open. As of Friday morning, they were all were still MIA in the woods near the Alpha Genesis Primate Center.
The local sheriff is urging neighbors to keep their doors and windows shut so the monkeys don’t get in. The research center uses the primates to conduct clinical trials for various treatments. They say the monkeys they are looking for have never been used for testing.
