All escaped monkeys recaptured after 3 months on the loose
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The last of the 43 escaped monkeys has been captured after nearly three months on the run from a research facility in Yemassee, according to an update put out by the Yemassee Police Department.
The update was made to the Yemassee Police Department’s Facebook page on Friday, Jan. 24, after Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard confirmed that all of the monkeys have been recaptured and also all appear in good health.
“It was a real team and community effort,” Westergaard said in the release.
The female adolescent rhesus macaque monkeys first escaped from the Castle Hall Road facility on Nov. 6 after two doors were left unsecured after a routine feeding and cleaning.
Originally, Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center reported that “several primates” had escaped from the facility.
Later in the day they were able to confirm that 40 primates had escaped and the next day that number rose to 43.
The monkeys spent several days playing and hanging around in the trees surrounding the facility before any were apprehended, but by Nov. 11, 30 primates had been recaptured.
Before the update on Friday, the last update made was on Nov. 18, stating that all but four monkeys had been recaptured. It is not clear how the last of the monkeys were captured.
After the monkeys first escaped, the facility stated they were trying to humanely coax the monkeys with traps and food, but if they did not come back on their own, they would resort to using tranquilizing darts to recapture them
The facility has had issues with monkeys fleeing in the past, with 19 monkeys escaping in 2016 and 26 monkeys escaping in 2014.
Alpha Genesis, which breeds monkeys and provides nonhuman primate products and bio-research services worldwide according to their website, has about 4,000 primates at the main facility in Yemassee.
There is also a second facility that houses 3,000 monkeys on Old Salkehatchie Road in Early Branch.
The primate escape attracted national attention and additional scrutiny for the facility which is being looked into for the escape and alleged mistreatment of the primates by the Animal Care Program of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service after a whistleblower complaint to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) alleging that more than 20 monkeys had been killed as a result of a broken heater.
Alpha Genesis has denied all allegations.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
