A truck carrying monkeys overturned on a highway in the US state of Mississippi, allowing the animals to escape, local officials said.
“All but one of the escaped monkeys were destroyed,” the Jasper County Sheriff's Department said. But a later update said officials have since been able to “get a correct count” and determine that three monkeys are still at large.
The monkeys were housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, for scientific research.
The sheriff's department warned that the monkeys carried disease, but Tulane University later said they had not been exposed to “any infectious agent.”
It is unclear exactly how many monkeys were originally in the truck, who they belonged to, where they were being taken, who was transporting them or why the truck overturned.
Tulane University said the animals “were not transported by Tulane, were not owned by Tulane, and were not under the care of Tulane.”
He added that while Tulane “was not transporting or possessing primates at the time of the incident,” it dispatched “a team of animal care experts to assist” officials.
Video posted online shows monkeys moving through tall grass on the side of a Mississippi highway. Along the highway there were wooden boxes labeled “Live Animals.”
The monkeys being transported were rhesus macaques, animals commonly used for medical research.
In their initial report, officials quoted the truck driver as saying the monkeys were dangerous and needed to be handled with personal protective equipment.
This is what led officials to initially claim that monkeys carried disease, although Tulane University later clarified that this was not the case.
