Final 4 Escaped Lab Monkeys Stick Together As They Avoid Traps In South Carolina

The Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center has faced allegations of mistreatment in the wake of 43 monkeys escaping from the facility.

More than a month after 43 monkeys escaped from a medical lab in South Carolina, the last four to evade capture were sticking close together.

The dozens of young, female Rhesus macaques bred for research broke out of the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center in Yemassee last month after an employee failed to latch the doors to their enclosure.

Since then, nearly all of them have been trapped and returned to the research and breeding center, but as of Sunday, four remained on the loose, local news station WCSC reported. Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard said in a statement that those at the center had been seeing the monkey quartet together in a tree on a near-daily basis.

The four escapees “look good” and have been seen engaged in grooming, he said. Since the monkeys seem to be “doing well” outside, the staff is simply “waiting for them to go in the traps” rather than taking a more aggressive approach, like having them “darted.”

Alpha Genesis did not immediately return a HuffPost inquiry about the remaining four monkeys, nor about the increased scrutiny the facility has faced in the wake of the highly publicized escape.