Three monkeys at large after escape from crashed truck in US

A truck transporting monkeys overturned on a highway in the US state of Mississippi, allowing the animals to escape, local authorities said.

“All but one of the escaped monkeys were destroyed,” the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department said. But in a later update, he said authorities had since been able to “obtain a correct count” and determined that three monkeys were still on the loose.

The monkeys were housed at Tulane University’s National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, for scientific research.

The sheriff’s department had warned that the monkeys carried diseases, but Tulane University later said they had not been exposed to “any infectious agents.”

It is unclear how many monkeys were initially 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 in Tulane’s custody.”

He added that although Tulane “did not transport or possess the non-human primates at the time of the incident,” it sent “a team of animal care experts to assist” those responsible.

Videos shared online showed the monkeys moving through tall grass on the side of the Mississippi highway. On the highway were wooden boxes labeled “live animals.”

The monkeys transported were rhesus monkeys, animals commonly used for medical studies.

In their initial report, authorities cited the truck driver as saying the monkeys were dangerous and needed to be handled with personal protective equipment.

This led authorities to initially say that the monkeys carried diseases, although Tulane University later clarified that this was not the case.