YEMASSEE — It happened again.

A group of 43 female monkeys have absconded from a Lowcountry breeding facility with a history of security challenges and violations. According to Yemassee police, the monkeys escaped from the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center on Castle Hall Road on Nov. 6 around 1 p.m. No one had been captured as of Friday morning.

Alpha Genesis breeds monkeys to sell for medical testing and research. A federal inspection in May found the facility houses 6,701 primates. In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped from Alpha Genesis. About six hours later, the primates were returned home.

For the latest prison break, the company set traps and is leading the recapture, said Police Chief Gregory Alexander. The police are also assisting in the search with thermal imaging cameras. These small primates weigh about 6 pounds, he said.

Police say the monkeys pose no threat or health risk to the public, although they still “strongly advised” residents to keep doors and windows securely closed to prevent the primates from entering homes.

Anyone who encounters the primates should call 911 rather than attempting to capture or contact them.

“Just try not to take these things home or pet them,” Alexander said. “We get a lot of them on our social media. (Taking them) is a crime because they don’t belong to you.”

Heavy rains impacted search efforts, Greg Westergaard, CEO of Alpha Genesis, said in a text message.

“We are following our procedures, which include observation and eliciting ‘have-a-heart traps,’” Westergaard said. “A bit hampered by the rain while the monkeys are crouching.”

The young monkeys escaped after a caretaker left two doors unsecured while cleaning their enclosure. The small primates are disease-free and have never been used for testing because of their young age, Westergaard said.

“They’re a little skittish, so we keep our distance until they get home,” he said.

In a Facebook post, Yemassee police said the department is working with “state agriculture and wildlife officials to effectively and humanely manage this incident.”

Representative Nancy Mace shared in a post on X that her office is “monitoring the situation.”

Yemassee entrepreneur Charlotte Murray wasn’t too concerned about the escaped monkeys.

Murray, owner of local event venue Lowcountry Living Room, said she is familiar with the monkeys. Her home is near the Alpha Genesis campus.

“We’ve seen them on the side of the road before. We’ve seen them in trees,” Murray said. “It’s been a long time. I think they’re mostly safe, so we’ve never been too worried about them, but we know full well they’re around.”

Escapes and controversies from the past

Last year, Alpha Genesis – one of the world’s largest breeders of monkeys for research and medical testing – signed a federal contract to operate a large monkey colony on Morgan Island, located off the Coosaw, Dataw and St. Helena Islands in Beaufort County. Morgan Island, better known to locals as ‘Monkey Island’, is home to approximately 3,500 rhesus monkeys. It is located along the St. Helena Sound in the ACE Basin.

The monkey keepers have a history of problems securing their primates and other problems at their Yemassee facility, often referred to locally as the “monkey farm.”

During a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection in January 2023, federal regulators found five non-critical violations at the facility related to proper cleaning, temperature maintenance, sharp edges that could cause injury and moldy food. These problems were corrected the following month.

As part of a September 2022 inspection, regulators found six incidents of animals escaping from their primary enclosures. The primates discovered weaknesses in chain-link fences or opened panels between cages. Alpha Genesis responded by repairing the weakened fences and eliminating cages that animals could open.

This was part of a report that prompted the USDA to issue an official warning to Alpha Genesis. The federal government warned that future violations could result in civil penalties, criminal charges or other sanctions.

The USDA fined Alpha Genesis $12,600 for incidents that occurred between December 2014 and February 2016. Federal government documents noted improperly secured enclosures and dehydration caused by an accidentally closed water line. An animal exploitation watchdog group said the penalties were not strict enough.

The records show that there was a violation that led to 26 monkeys escaping in December 2014. In August 2015, a monkey was placed in the wrong social group and killed by other monkeys.

Westergaard previously told The Post and Courier that the company paid the citations in July 2017. He said Alpha Genesis had self-reported some of the violations cited by the federal government.

At least five monkeys died at the facility between 2011 and 2012, according to the USDA.

Rhesus monkeys are a favorite among researchers. In the 1960s, they were common subjects in psychological experiments because of their overestimated similarity to humans – most notably in the total isolation and induced depression experiments of University of Wisconsin scientist Harry Harlow.

Some monkeys starved themselves during the 1960s experiments after being kept in total isolation for three months, while those isolated for longer periods often never recovered from what Harlow called social destruction, his research shows.

More recently, rhesus monkeys have been used as test subjects in experiments by medical researchers because of their now better understood similarity to humans, according to an obituary in the American Journal of Primatology.

The incident at the Yemassee facility is the second reported primate escape in the Lowcountry this year.

In May, a Japanese macaque named Bradley escaped from his home in Walterboro. After a multi-day search, Colleton County Animal Control reported the monkey had been captured. Two days later, officials revealed that the animal was found dead.

John Sturgeon and Tony Kukulich contributed to this report.