The latest escape of a number of analysis monkeys after the truck carrying them overturned on a Mississippi interstate is the newest glimpse into the secretive trade of animal analysis and the processes that permit key particulars of what occurred to be stored from the general public.

Three monkeys have remained on the free because the crash on Tuesday in a rural space alongside Interstate 59, spilling picket crates labeled “stay monkeys” into the tall grass close to the freeway. Since then, searchers in masks, face shields and different protecting tools have scoured close by fields and woods for the lacking primates. 5 of the 21 Rhesus macaques on board had been killed through the search, in line with the native sheriff, however it was unclear how that occurred.

Mississippi authorities haven’t disclosed the driving force’s identify, the corporate concerned in transporting the monkeys, the place the monkeys had been headed or who owns them. Whereas Tulane College in New Orleans has acknowledged that the monkeys had been housed at its Nationwide Biomedical Analysis Heart in Covington, Louisiana, it stated it doesn’t personal them and received’t establish who does.

The questions surrounding the Mississippi crash and the thriller of why the animals had been touring by way of the South are outstanding, animal advocates say.

“When a truck carrying 21 monkeys crashes on a public freeway, the neighborhood has a proper to know who owned these animals, the place they had been being despatched, and what ailments they could have been uncovered to and harbored just by being caught up within the primate experimentation trade,” stated Lisa Jones-Engel, senior science adviser on primate experimentation with Folks for the Moral Therapy of Animals.

“It’s extremely uncommon — and deeply troubling — that Tulane refuses to establish its companion on this cargo,” Jones-Engel added.

Transporting analysis animals sometimes requires legally binding contracts that stop the events concerned from disclosing info, Tulane College stated in an announcement to The Related Press. That’s carried out for the security of the animals and to guard proprietary info, the New Orleans-based college stated.

“To the perfect of Tulane’s information, the 13 recovered animals stay within the possession of their proprietor and are en path to their unique vacation spot,” the assertion stated.

The crash has drawn a spread of reactions — from conspiracy theories that counsel a authorities plot to sicken folks to severe responses from individuals who oppose experimenting on animals.

“How extremely unhappy and incorrect,” Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stated of the crash.

“I’ve by no means met a taxpayer that wishes their hard-earned {dollars} paying for animal abuse nor who helps it,” the Georgia congresswoman stated in a put up on the social platform X. “This wants to finish!”

Tulane’s Covington heart receives $35 million yearly in Nationwide Institutes of Well being assist, and its companions embody practically 500 investigators from greater than 155 establishments globally, the college stated in an Oct. 9 information launch. The middle has been funded by NIH since 1964, and federal grants are a big supply of revenue for the establishment, it stated.

In July, among the analysis heart’s 350 staff held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of a brand new 10,000-square-foot workplace constructing and a brand new laboratory on the facility. This fall, the power’s identify was modified from the Tulane Nationwide Primate Analysis Heart to the Tulane Nationwide Biomedical Analysis Heart to replicate its broader mission, college officers introduced.

The Mississippi crash is one among no less than three main monkey escapes within the U.S. over the previous 4 years.

Final November, 43 Rhesus macaques escaped from a South Carolina compound that breeds them for medical analysis after an enclosure wasn’t absolutely locked. Staff from the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, arrange traps to seize them. Nonetheless, some spent two months that winter residing within the woods and weathering a uncommon snowstorm. By late January, the final 4 escapees had been recaptured after being lured again into captivity by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In January 2022, a number of cynomolgus macaque monkeys escaped when a truck towing a trailer of about 100 of the animals collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania freeway, authorities stated. The monkeys had been headed to a quarantine facility in an undisclosed location after arriving at John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport in New York on a flight from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, authorities stated. A spokesperson for the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention stated all the animals had been accounted for inside a few day, although three had been euthanized for undisclosed causes.