The dramatic escape of several research monkeys following a truck crash on a Mississippi interstate has cast a spotlight on the secretive animal research industry, exposing the opaque processes that keep crucial details from public scrutiny.
Three Rhesus macaques remain at large since Tuesday’s incident, which saw a truck overturn in a rural area along Interstate 59, spilling wooden crates marked “live monkeys” into the tall grass. Search teams, equipped with masks, face shields and other protective gear, have since been combing nearby fields and woodlands for the missing primates. Five of the 21 macaques on board were killed during the search, though the local sheriff has not clarified how this occurred.
Mississippi officials have been notably tight-lipped, refusing to identify the driver, the company involved in transporting the monkeys, their intended destination, or their ultimate owner. While Tulane University in New Orleans confirmed the primates had been housed at its National Biomedical Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, it has denied ownership and declined to name the actual proprietor. The incident starkly highlights the lack of public information surrounding the transportation and ownership of animals used in scientific research.
The questions surrounding the Mississippi crash and the mystery of why the animals were traveling through the South are remarkable, animal advocates say.
“When a truck carrying 21 monkeys crashes on a public highway, the community has a right to know who owned those animals, where they were being sent, and what diseases they may have been exposed to and harbored simply by being caught up in the primate experimentation industry,” said Lisa Jones-Engel, senior science adviser on primate experimentation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“It is highly unusual — and deeply troubling — that Tulane refuses to identify its partner in this shipment,” Jones-Engel added.
Transporting research animals typically requires legally binding contracts that prevent the parties involved from disclosing information, Tulane University said. That’s done for the safety of the animals and to protect proprietary information, the New Orleans-based university said.
“To the best of Tulane’s knowledge, the 13 recovered animals remain in the possession of their owner and are en route to their original destination,” the statement said.
The crash has drawn a range of reactions — from conspiracy theories to serious responses from people who oppose experimenting on animals.
“How incredibly sad and wrong,” Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said of the crash.
“I’ve never met a taxpayer that wants their hard-earned dollars paying for animal abuse nor who supports it,” the Georgia congresswoman said in a post on the social platform X. “This needs to end!”
Tulane’s Covington center receives $35 million annually in National Institutes of Health support, and its partners include nearly 500 investigators from more than 155 institutions globally, the school said in an Oct. 9 news release. The center has been funded by NIH since 1964, and federal grants are a significant source of income for the institution, it said.
In July, some of the research center’s 350 employees held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of a new 10,000-square-foot office building and a new laboratory at the facility. This fall, the facility’s name was changed from the Tulane National Primate Research Center to the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center to reflect its broader mission, university officials announced.
The Mississippi crash is one of at least three major monkey escapes in the U.S. over the past four years.
Last November, 43 Rhesus macaques escaped from a South Carolina compound that breeds them for medical research after an enclosure wasn’t fully locked. Employees from the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, set up traps to capture them. However, some spent two months that winter living in the woods and weathering a rare snowstorm. By late January, the last four escapees were recaptured after being lured back into captivity by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
In January 2022, several cynomolgus macaque monkeys escaped when a truck towing a trailer of about 100 of the animals collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania highway, authorities said. The monkeys were headed to a quarantine facility in an undisclosed location after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on a flight from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, authorities said. A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all of the animals were accounted for within about a day, though three were euthanized for undisclosed reasons.
