Puerto Rico purifies monkeys

Puerto Rico island officials killed 800 monkeys because they thought they destroyed fields and resources.

According to AP, in the 60s and 70s of the last century many patas monkeys (a long-tailed monkey) fled the laboratory in Puerto Rico. Since then they have been rapidly multiplying in the tropical environment. The people on the island were accustomed to the patas monkeys breaking into the house, destroying the fields or running wildly on the streets, causing traffic to get stuck.

A patas monkey. Photo: hlami.org.

Ana Maria Ramos, a spokesman for the Puerto Rico Ministry of Natural Resources, announced that the island authorities had destroyed 800 monkeys, most of which were patas monkeys. The other 200, which are mostly rhesus monkeys, were taken to the Primate Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico and many other countries.

AP said there are no labs that need patas monkeys because they are no longer suitable for scientific research and infection. Even zoos are not interested in them.

Puerto Rico is an archipelago located in the northeast of the Caribbean.