Remember those 43 monkeys that escaped from a U.S. research lab? They’ve caught 35 of them — but haven’t yet caught the other eight.
But even worse… The Independent reports that now another animal escape has led to “reports of two large emus running riot…”
The birds’ owner, Sam Morace, took to social media to plead with locals for their patience, saying: “For everyone that keeps seeing an emu, yes it is mine. There are 2 of them out.” Morace said their two flightless birds broke loose three months ago…. “They are feral and not trained like the ones we have at the house.”
This provoked some discussion on Facebook. (“Does nobody learn to lasso anymore?”) But Morace responded that you “can’t lasso a bird you have to grab them by their feet. Their necks are super long and fragile.” In another post Morace detailed efforts to capture their birds. “Local law enforcement has already been at my house, we are trying to get a tranquilizer approved so we can bring them home.
“Thank you for all the concerns and questions. But if the emus were that easy to catch they would be home already.
If you’re wondering how the escaped monkeys are doing out in the wild, someone who photographed them earlier this week said they appeared “playful, curious and jumping from tree to tree.” The Guardian reports local officials have now “requested that the public avoid using drones near the facility. Earlier in the week, they reported that a drone incident ‘spooked’ the monkeys, increasing their stress levels and complicating efforts to recapture them.”
Their article also notes reports that the facility houses 7,000 monkeys. And this isn’t the first time some have escaped…
In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped from the same facility, according to the Post and Courier newspaper, but were returned after six hours. Earlier, in 2014, 26 macaques reportedly escaped and were captured within two days. Documents from federal regulators from previous years revealed other incidents at the facility, as reported by the New York Times. One involved a primate escaping while being transported to the medical clinic and subsequently disappearing into the woods. Another involved two monkeys breaking out of their outdoor chain-link enclosure, which reportedly resulted in one monkey being lured back inside and the other dying shortly after being recaptured. In 2017, the Department of Agriculture fined the company more than $12,000 partly due to failures to contain the animals, according to the New York Times.
The Guardian also links to a related read from February: “Plan for US ‘mini-city’ of 30,000 monkeys for medical research faces backlash.”
Over the next 20 years, the facility will assemble a mega-troop of about 30,000 long-tailed macaques, a species native to south-east Asia, in vast barn-like structures in Bainbridge, Georgia, which has a human population of just 14,000… But the plan faces fierce opposition, with some Bainbridge residents calling on local authorities to block the construction of the proposed primate manse. “They’re an invasive species and 30,000 of them, we’d just be overrun with monkeys,” claimed Ted Lee, a local man. “I don’t think anybody would want 30,000 monkeys next door,” added David Barber, who would live just 400ft from the new facility.
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