At least 43 primates were on the loose Thursday in a South Carolina town where authorities “strongly advised” residents to keep their doors and windows locked after the animals escaped from a research laboratory.
“At this point, none have been captured,” the Yemassee Police Department said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
Traps were being set around the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center in Yemassee, where the Rhesus Macaque monkeys escaped en masse from their enclosures around 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Yemassee Town Administrator Matthew Garnes said during a briefing Thursday with town officials that the monkeys escaped when a new employee at the Alpha Genesis center left the door to their enclosure open.
Mia Mitchell, a resident of Yemassee, told ABC News she was driving home Wednesday evening when she saw one of the escaped primates running across a road.
“I thought my eyes were deceiving me and I was like, ‘That couldn’t be a monkey,” Mitchell said.