Oct. 28 (UPI) — A truck carrying lab monkeys crashed on a stretch of highway in rural Mississippi on Tuesday, with authorities still hunting for three of the escaped simians.
The incident began when a truck carrying rhesus monkeys crashed on a stretch of Interstate 59 outside of Heidelberg, according to a Facebook post by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department.
The sheriff’s department warned the public not to approach the monkeys because of their aggression and potential health risk. But the sheriff’s department, in following updates, has given shifting explanations of where the monkeys came from, their threat to humans and how many remained on the loose.
In a subsequent update, the sheriff’s department stated that the monkeys were being transported from Tulane University, were about 40 pounds, aggressive and carried COVID-19 as well as sexually transmitted infections.
However, the most recent sheriff’s update included a statement from Tulane indicating that the monkeys
