Free transit actually is a thing, and you might be surprised where

Small Ontario community joins cities going fare-free. 

Will others follow?

James Dunne · CBC News · Posted: Nov 11, 2024 

Ridership for public transit in Orangeville, Ont., has more than doubled in the past two years, thanks to going fare-free. (Craig Chivers/CBC)

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While public transit in many Canadian cities struggles with fares going up and ridership going down, in one community the passenger count has more than doubled in the past two years.

Transit ridership in the town of Orangeville, Ont., will, by the end of the year, have increased by 150 to 160 per cent, according to Mayor Lisa Post.  

"It's really impacting the entire community positively," she said. 

The reason for that big spike? Orangeville's buses became free in 2023 as part of a test program which the town just pledged to continue until 2027. 

The experiment is sparking discussion about whether some form of free transit is possible in bigger cities and how it might work.   

WATCH | Free transit in Orangeville:

Ridership has doubled since Orangeville, Ont., started a fare-free pilot project, but experts caution the concept would be an uphill climb in bigger communities that need the money transit brings in. BIG CITY TRANSIT IS UNDERFUNDED BASED ON THE IDEA THAT IT CAN RECOVER THE FUNDS VIA RIDERSHIP, WHICH IS ALWAYS IN DEFICIT

The community of 30,000 people, some 60 kilometres northwest of Toronto, may not be known for trendsetting, but has joined a list of communities in Canada and the U.S. where riding buses and streetcars is free.

And Post says more than two dozen officials from elsewhere in Canada have asked her about her city's test — "municipalities of all sizes, from small rural to small urban like we are, right to big cities." 

How it adds up

Free transit is seen by advocates as a social equity policy that helps people with lower incomes.

And, when priced right, reliable transit can also reduce traffic and pollution.

Orangeville isn't the first city in Canada to offer free transit for everyone, but it is the largest. Canmore, Alta., (pop. 17,036) went fare-free in 2022, after a few years testing it out in the summer. Mont-Tremblant, Que., (pop. 11,000) started its free transit program in 2019.  

Orangeville is twice the size of Canmore and, before going fare-free, about 100,000 riders a year used the three routes of its bus system. 

Orangeville Mayor Lisa Post says more than two dozen officials from elsewhere in Canada have asked her about her community's free transit program and how it works. (Craig Chivers/CBC)

In 2023, the year free transit began, it had 225,000 riders and it's on track for more than 260,000 this year.

The budget for Orangeville transit is almost $1.2 million a year and in 2019, the last year for which data is available, fare revenue accounted for about $150,000.

Orangeville resident Vivian Petho says free transit makes it easier for her to get to appointments and her son’s school. (Craig Chivers/CBC )

Since collecting fares cost up to $80,000 a year, Orangeville decided it made sense to cover that small portion of the transit budget another way.

"We always are trying to find ways to improve our road networks for vehicles," said Post. "We invest in car culture, we need to invest in transit culture."

What riders say 

Post says researching free transit included speaking with local food bank users who said not having to pay fares made "the difference of being able to get bread and milk." 

In addition to residents with low incomes, she says the program helps seniors get to medical appointments and more social outings, and young people get to school and part-time jobs. 

Yuval Grinspun, CEO of Left Turn Right Turn, a transit consultancy in Toronto, says free transit can work in small- and medium-sized communities. (Craig Chivers/CBC )

Riding the city's green route, Vivian Petho says she's grateful she can get to appointments and to her son's school and activities for free. "I can't do that unless I have transit," she said. "We go all over on this bus."

On the same bus, Christopher Gierusz was visiting Orangeville from nearby Brampton.

"I find this amazing," he told CBC News. "The city I'm from is expensive to travel on the bus." 

Several of the U.S. cities with fare-free transit are quite a bit larger than Orangeville, including:

• Albuquerque, N.M. (pop 560,274).
• Alexandria, Va., (pop 155,230).
• Richmond, Va., (pop 229,247).
• Kansas City, Mo., (pop. 510,704).    

In Canada, advocates and local politicians have pushed for free transit in cities like Ottawa, Winnipeg and Victoria.

In the recent B.C. election, the Green Party promised free transit province wide if elected, and in the upcoming Nova Scotia election, the Liberals say they'll make transit free if they win.

So could free transit work in bigger cities here?

Boston made three heavily used bus routes free in areas where over half of the riders are classified as low-income. (City of Boston)

Yuval Grinspun, CEO of Left Turn Right Turn, a transit consultancy in Toronto, says free transit can work in small- and medium-sized communities, but for larger ones, "it's going to be an uphill climb." 

He says the problem is that fares count for so much of large transit system budgets in Canada, that they can't be dropped without massive funding increases."

The 'free for some' option

Grinspun says he believes a more equitable model is providing targeted fares to the people who "have the hardest time finding $3 or what-not a day to pay for transit." 

David-Alexandre Brassard, the chief economist of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, agrees with the idea of reducing or eliminating fares for some groups.

"We know financially, it's a bit harder for younger people than it has been in the past, so could alleviating transit cost be part of the solution?" he asked. "There's some thinking to do around the pricing model, for sure."

Some Canadian cities currently let seniors ride free or offer free youth passes. 

Other large Canadian cities have a low-income transit pass option, but the passes aren't free and applicants have to prove they qualify. 

There's another approach to free transit in Boston, a city of 654,000 people with another 3.7 million living in the surrounding areas. It's made three heavily used bus routes free in areas where over half of riders are deemed low-income. 

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu even does social media videos with riders who count on those routes. 

New York City experimented with free bus routes for a year, though it also struggles with fare evasion and enforcement.

• Ontario making GO Transit free for veterans, members of Canadian Armed Forces

• Burlington, Ont., considers making transit free for all

• More seniors are using Montreal's Metro thanks to free fare program

There are arguments against free transit, in some cases from transit advocates who argue reliability and safety are more important to riders.

But in Orangeville, the free transit program is expanding next year to include a nearby rural area. 

Post says the county government sees the program as such a success it's adding extra funding for an additional route. 

The monkeys that science has experimented on for over a century

Daniel Bellamy
Sun, November 10, 2024 

EURONEWS 


The rhesus macaque monkeys that managed to escape lab this week are among the most studied animals on the planet.

So far just one of the 43 that were bred for medical research - and that escaped from the lab - has been recovered unharmed, officials said on Saturday.

Many of the others are still located a few yards from away, jumping back and forth over the facility’s fence, police said in a statement.

An employee at the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee hadn't fully locked a door as she fed and checked on them, officials said.

For more than a century, they have held a mirror to humanity, revealing our strengths and weaknesses through their own clever behaviours, organ systems and genetic code.

The bare-faced primates with expressive eyes have been launched on rockets into space. Their genome has been mapped. They have even been stars of a reality TV show.

Animal rights groups point out that the species has been subjected to studies on vaccines, organ transplants and the impact of separating infants from mothers. At the same time, many in the scientific community will tell you just how vital their research is to fighting AIDS, polio and COVID-19.

FILE - In this May 13, 2019, photo, a mirror is held up to Izzle, a rhesus macaque, at Primates Inc., in Westfield, Wis. - Carrie Antlfinger/Copyright 2019 The AP. All rights reserved

In 2003, a nationwide shortage of rhesus macaques threatened to slow down studies and scientists were paying up to 9,000 euros per animal to continue their work.

“Every large research university in the United States probably has some rhesus macaques hidden somewhere in the basement of its medical school,” according to the 2007 book, “Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World."

“The U.S. Army and NASA have rhesus macaques too,” wrote the book's author, Dario Maestripieri, a behavioural scientist at the University of Chicago, “and for years they trained them to play computer video games to see whether the monkeys could learn to pilot planes and launch missiles.”

Research begins in the 1890s

Humans have been using the rhesus macaque for scientific research since the late 1800s when the theory of evolution gained more acceptance, according to a 2022 research paper by the journal eLife.

The first study on the species was published in 1893 and described the “anatomy of advanced pregnancy," according to the eLife paper. By 1925, the Carnegie Science Institute had set up a breeding population of the monkeys to study embryology and fertility in a species that was similar to humans.

One reason for the animal's popularity was its abundance. These monkeys have the largest natural range of any non-human primate, stretching from Afghanistan and India to Vietnam and China.

“The other reason is because rhesus macaques, as primates go, are a pretty hardy species,” said Eve Cooper, the eLife research paper's lead author and a biology professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “They can live under conditions and they can be bred under conditions that are relatively easy to maintain.”
NASA rockets and the Salk polio vaccine

In the 1950s, the monkey's kidneys were used to make the Salk polio vaccine. NASA also used the animals during the space race, according to a brief history of animals in space on the agency's website.

For example, a rhesus monkey named “Miss Sam” was launched in 1960 in a Mercury capsule that attained a velocity of 1,900 kph and an altitude of 14.5 kilometres . She was retrieved in overall good condition.

“She was also returned to her training colony until her death on an unknown date,” NASA wrote.

Mapping the human genome

In 2007, scientists unravelled the DNA of the rhesus macaque. The species shared about 93% of its DNA with humans, even though macaques branched off from the ape family about 25 million years ago.

In comparison, humans and chimpanzees have evolved separately since splitting from a common ancestor about six million years ago, but still have almost 99% of their gene sequences in common.

The mapping of the human genome in 2001 sparked an explosion of work to similarly decipher the DNA of other animals. The rhesus macaque was the third primate genome to be completed,

‘They’re very political'

For those who have studied the behaviour of rhesus macaques, the research is just as interesting.

“They share some striking similarities to ourselves in terms of their social intelligence,” said Maestripieri, the University of Chicago professor who wrote a book on the species.

For example, the animals are very family oriented, siding with relatives when fights break out, he told The Associated Press on Friday. But they also recruit allies when they're attacked.

“They're very political,” Maestripieri said. “Most of their daily lives are spent building political alliances with each other. Does that sound familiar?"

Maestripieri was a consultant for a reality show about some rhesus macaques in India called “Monkey Thieves.”

“They basically started following large groups of these rhesus macaques and naming them,” the professor said. “It was beautifully done because these monkeys essentially act like people occasionally. So it’s fascinating to follow their stories.”

43 lab monkeys escaped in South Carolina. They have a legal claim to freedom.

Who owns the escaped monkeys now? It’s more complicated than you might think.


by Angela Fernandez and Justin Marceau

Nov 11, 2024

VOX

Monkeys at the Alpha Genesis research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina. Anadolu via Getty Images

Last week, 43 monkeys, all of them young female rhesus macaques, escaped from the Alpha Genesis research laboratory in Yemassee, South Carolina, when an employee failed to properly secure the door to their enclosure.


It wasn’t the first time something like this happened at Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds and uses thousands of monkeys for biomedical testing and supplies nonhuman primate products and bio-research services to researchers worldwide. In 2018, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) fined the facility $12,600 in part for other incidents in which monkeys had escaped. “We’re not strangers to seeing monkeys randomly,” a nearby resident and member of the Yemassee town council told the New York Times.


Alpha Genesis is now working to recapture the macaques, who are each about the size of a cat; over the weekend, 25 of them were recovered. Meanwhile, the animal protection group Stop Animal Exploitation Now, which for years has filed federal complaints against the facility, has called on the USDA to prosecute Alpha Genesis as a repeat violator of its duty to keep the animals secure.


“The recovery process is slow, but the team is committed to taking as much time as necessary to safely recover all remaining animals,” a Facebook post from the Yemassee Police Department said, attributing the comment to Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard.


In one way, this is a story about what looks like a corporate failure. But there is another way to understand this situation, both legally and morally. What if these intrepid macaques, who the lab has said pose no threat to the public and carry no infectious diseases, have a legal claim to freedom?


The legal status of wild animals is more contested and malleable than ever, evident in the recent court case arguing that Happy, an elephant living at the Bronx Zoo, was a legal person entitled to freedom, the phasing out of animal use at entertainment venues like circuses, and the end of US lab experimentation on chimpanzees. While Alpha Genesis may have a strong financial incentive to recapture the escaped monkeys, longstanding legal doctrines suggest that the 18 monkeys still at large may not belong to the company as long as they remain free and outside of its custody. State officials, or perhaps even members of the public, might even be legally protected in rescuing these monkeys from a fate of cage confinement and invasive experimentation and bringing them to a sanctuary. Such an outcome would matter not just for these monkeys but also for the rights of captive animals more broadly.

When a captive animal becomes free


For many people, the idea of a lost animal becoming the property of another person might seem absurd. Certainly, no one would imagine forfeiting the companionship of a beloved dog or cat because the animal got out of the yard and was found by someone else. Neither law nor morality treats the escape of a domesticated animal as tantamount to a forfeiture of all claims to the animal.


But when it comes to wild animals, the law is different.


When a captive wild animal escapes, their captor generally remains liable for any damage the escaped animal creates to persons or property, but they may lose ownership of the animal, especially if the creature integrates into an existing wild population (sometimes called “reverting to the common stock”). That might sound unlikely for rhesus macaques in the US — the species is native to South and Southeast Asia and has been exported around the world for lab testing. But it turns out that it’s perfectly possible to live as a free-roaming rhesus macaque in South Carolina, where a more than four-decade-old population of the monkeys resides on the state’s Morgan Island, also known as “Monkey Island.”


Originally relocated from Puerto Rico between 1979 and 1980, the Morgan Island macaques now serve as a kind of reservoir of lab monkeys for the US government. Last year, Alpha Genesis won a federal contract to oversee the monkey colony there — in fact, the 43 escaped macaques had originally lived as “free-range” monkeys on the island before they were taken to be used for testing and research purposes, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CBS News in a statement. While these monkeys may not be able to rejoin the Morgan Island colony on their own, the fact that they came from a wild population strengthens the view of them as animals who not only can live in the wild but who deserve to be free.

Rhesus macaques on Morgan Island. The State/Getty Images

A macaque sits in a cage in a University of Muenster laboratory in Muenster, Germany, on November 24, 2017. Friso Gentsch/picture alliance via Getty Images


Our modern understanding of animals’ legal status derives from 19th-century American common law cases, which adopted the classical Roman legal approach to wild animals, or ferae naturae. Under that system, wild animals were a special type of property known as “fugitive” property because they could move freely and weren’t owned by anyone before being captured by a human. This created unique legal challenges — for example, conflicts between two hunters claiming the same animal — that can help us understand the case of the escaped monkeys.


The 1805 New York Supreme Court case Pierson v. Post, sometimes considered the most famous property case in American law (and about which one of us has written a book), is the starting point for understanding who legally owns a wild animal. In a dispute between two hunters, one who had been in hot pursuit of a fox and one who swooped in to kill the animal, the case held that the property interest of the latter was stronger. The court made clear that a definitive capture, and not pursuit alone, was necessary to establish and retain ownership of a wild animal.


In 1898, another New York case, Mullett v. Bradley, went further by recognizing that capture alone is not sufficient to claim ownership of a wild animal if the animal is able to escape and regain their liberty. The court found that a sea lion who had been brought by rail from the Pacific Ocean to the East Coast and later escaped from an enclosure in Long Island Sound was legally free until he was captured by a different person two weeks later. Cases like these gave rise to a doctrine that legal scholars now call “the law of capture,” which holds that if a captive wild animal escapes and control over them is lost, they no longer necessarily belong to the party who had previously captured them.


This line of legal reasoning generally works to the detriment of animals, ensuring that each generation of law students learns that animals are ours to possess and use for our own ends. But in the case of the escaped South Carolina monkeys, the law of capture raises doubt about whether the lab retains ownership of the animals unless and until it recaptures them.


A more recent Canadian case suggests that the law of capture may indeed offer a path to rescue for escaped animals like the South Carolina lab monkeys. In 2012, Darwin, a Japanese snow macaque, became a worldwide media sensation when he was found roaming through an Ontario Ikea store wearing a shearling coat and a diaper. While Darwin had been kept as a pet, a Canadian court ruled that he was a wild animal, and his owner lost her rights to him after he escaped from her car. Toronto Animal Services captured Darwin inside the store and transferred him to a primate sanctuary, where he could live among other macaques.


Still, one could argue that the escaped lab monkeys in South Carolina are effectively domestic animals who belong to their owner. Alpha Genesis has put resources into housing and raising them, including managing the monkey population on Morgan Island. But unlike pets who have been domesticated over many generations to live safely among humans, these rhesus macaques retain their wild instincts — they’ve been described as skittish, and food is being used to lure them into traps.


If the monkeys were to return on their own, like a house cat coming home after a day of adventure, the legal case for viewing them as domestic animals would be stronger because wild animals, once they stray, must have no animus revertendi, or intention to return. So long as these monkeys express their desire to remain free by evading capture, they should be considered wild animals. A 1917 Ontario court case, Campbell v. Hedley, involving a fox who had escaped a fur farm, established a similar principle, finding that the animal remained wild and thereby became free after fleeing the farm because they belonged to a species that “require[d] the exercise of art, force, or skill to keep them in subjection.”


There are, to be sure, cases in which common law courts have found losing control of an animal does not result in a loss of ownership. A 1927 Colorado case, Stephens v. Albers, held that a semi-domesticated silver fox who escaped from a fur farm still remained the property of that owner. And questions about the ownership of wild animals are infinitely debatable, as any good student of Pierson v. Post will tell you.


While these past cases offer important insight into the treatment of wild animals under common law, none of them took place in South Carolina, so courts in that state could consider them for guidance but wouldn’t be required to follow them when deciding who owns the escaped Alpha Genesis monkeys (and nothing in this piece should be construed as legal advice).

The moral meaning of animal escapes


Yet the law of capture aside, the plight of these monkeys is also interesting to us as legal scholars because it highlights one of many disconnects between the law and our moral intuitions about animals who have escaped and who are seeking or being afforded sanctuary. As journalist Tove Danovich has written, there is often great public sympathy and compassion for animals who escape painful confinement or slaughter at zoos, factory farms, or research labs — even among people who might otherwise tolerate the very systems that normalize those animals’ suffering. The public’s outrage when a single cow who escapes slaughter is gunned down by authorities is palpable and crosses ideological lines.


There is something enchanting and powerful, even romantic, about the idea of an animal escape, especially if it results in the animal’s rescue from confinement. Yet the law generally fails to recognize the moral tug that these escapes place on our collective conscience.


In a recent high-profile case in upstate New York, two cows wandered onto an animal sanctuary after escaping from a neighboring ranch. Unlike the South Carolina monkeys, these were straightforwardly domesticated animals, and the response from local law enforcement was harsh.


The sanctuary owner, Tracy Murphy, was arrested, shackled, and faced criminal liability for taking the cows in and refusing to immediately turn them over for slaughter (one of us, Justin, was defense counsel for Murphy, whose case was dismissed last month after a two-year legal battle). Her aid to two escaped cows was widely vilified by her neighbors and by local law enforcement because our legal system continues to treat many animals as property without any recognized rights or interests of their own.


The law is unlikely to swiftly abandon the archaic notion of human ownership over nonhuman animals. But we believe the law does implicitly recognize a right to rescue escaped animals, at least those who are lucky enough to make it on their own steam. We hope that the case of the escaped South Carolina monkeys will inspire conversations about the right of at least some animals to liberate themselves from exploitation and harm at human hands. Escapes are rare, but when they happen against all odds, we might ask ourselves, on both legal and moral grounds, whether the animals have a claim to freedom.

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1 monkey captured, 42 monkeys still on the loose after escaping research facility in SC

Saman Shafiq and Ahjané Forbes, USA TODAY
Updated Sat, November 9, 2024 at 5:08 p.m. MST·6 min read

One monkey has been captured after 43 monkeys escaped from Alpha Genesis, a primate research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, this week.

Yemassee is a small town about 26 miles from Beaufort.

In an update on Saturday, the Yemassee Police Department shared on Facebook that one monkey had been successfully captured.

"As of noon today, we are pleased to report that one of the escaped primates has been successfully recovered unharmed," the police department wrote in the statement. "A significant number of the remaining primates are still located just a few yards from the property, jumping back and forth over the facility's fence."

Alpha Genesis management and staff are on-site and will continue to monitor the monkeys throughout the weekend, police said.

As the organization continues to make effort to contain the animals, they want to remind the public that the animals can be easily startled by people as well as other objects.

*We must emphasize the importance of avoiding the use of drones in the vicinity," Greg Westergaard, Alpha Genesis Incorporated CEO, said in a statement. "The presence of drones not only frightens the animals but also elevates their stress levels."

"A drone that flew over the area yesterday caused a disturbance spooking the animals, further complicating efforts to facilitate their safe return," Westergaard adds.

'Like herding cats': Llamas on the loose in Utah were last seen roaming train tracks
Monkeys escaped because doors were not secured

The primates escaped after a caretaker failed to secure the doors, Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard said, according to the police department. It was initially reported that 40 monkeys escaped but the number has since been confirmed to be 43.

Police said the animals have never been used for testing given their young ages and size and a spokesperson of Alpha Genesis told police that "these animals are too young to carry disease."

The monkeys are "believed to be in the wooded region surrounding the facility" and officers are assisting the Alpha Genesis staff, who were "attempting to entice the animals back using food," in corralling the animals.
Residents advised to exercise caution, avoid area

Residents in Yemassee and surrounding areas were "strongly advised" to secure all doors and windows to prevent the animals from entering their homes.

Authorities have also advised residents to "refrain from approaching" or interacting with the monkeys and immediately call 911 if they see any of the escaped animals.

"These animals are highly sensitive and easily startled," the Yemassee Police Department said. "The public is advised to avoid the area as these animals are described as skittish and any additional noise or movement could hinder their safe capture."

This is not the first time that the monkeys escaped the facility. In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped from Alpha Genesis and were captured almost six hours later, according to The Post and Courier, while 26 monkeys escaped in December 2014.

Alpha Genesis − which conducts research projects for government, university, and private industry clients, according to their website − did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for a comment on the incident.
What kind of monkeys escaped in South Carolina?

The monkeys that escaped are rhesus macaques primates, described as "very young females weighing approximately 6 - 7 lbs".

Rhesus macaques, originally from Asia, have come to inhabit the swampy banks of the Silver River in Florida. Their population has been projected to grow to around 400 monkeys as of 2022, up from 176 in 2015, according to a 2019 study by University of Florida researchers.

They first came to Ocala as jungle cruise boat attractions around 90 years ago, as the Ocala StarBanner, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. The macaques were let loose on Monkey Island, and soon swam away, forming troops with other monkeys along the river.

A concern, though: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the Florida monkeys are a public health threat because around a quarter of the population carries herpes B virus. Interactions between humans and the macaques is a concern, especially with kayakers and others feeding the monkeys, which is illegal.
How many monkeys does Alpha Genesis have?

Alpha Genesis has approximately 5,000 monkeys across two sites from Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. Species include marmosets, cynomolgus and rhesus macaques, African Greens, and several New World species.

While the primates escaped from the site on Castle Hall Road in Beaufort County, Alpha Genesis also has a site in neighboring Hampton County, per the Hampton County Guardian.
What is Alpha Genesis?

Alpha Genesis Inc. describes itself as the "world’s premier provider of the finest nonhuman primate products and services" on its website.

The facility says its "experienced and caring staff" is "dedicated to conducting humane research with nonhuman primates to advance knowledge in primate biology and to address human health concerns."

Alpha Genesis President and CEO Dr. Greg Westergaard told The Hampton County Guardian during a 2011 interview that the facility is "primarily a breeding facility," and that they raise the animals for "research purposes."

"Our overall goal is monkey health and monkey reproduction," Westergaard told the Hampton County Guardian. "We mostly raise animals for research purposes. We do some behavioral research here, and we do studies that are fairly low impact, like drawing blood."

"None of the animals here are infected with any diseases, and the studies don't represent any danger to the monkeys or the people here," the CEO had said.

Alpha Genesis was established in 1964 to provide animals for polio vaccine research, per the Hampton County Guardian.

Animals raised in Yemassee are sold only to USDA-licensed research facilities, Alpha Genesis told the Hampton County Guardian, where they are used in compliance with current legal and ethical practices to further vaccine development and cures for a wide range of diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and more.

"I fully support alternatives to using animals for research… but I don't see any way around it at this time," Westergaard had said. "But I also support medical advancements that can help large numbers of people. Our goal is to keep the animals as healthy as possible and use as few as possible."
Monkey Island

In March of 2023, Alpha Genesis also took over the management of South Carolina's Morgan Island, also known as "Monkey Island," home to about 3,500 rhesus monkeys, The Post and Courier reported.

Located off the coast of Beaufort, Morgan Island covers an area of more than 2,000 acres and is off-limits to humans, according to Travel and Leisure.

Morgan Island was previously owned and managed by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, while the monkey colony was owned by the National Institute of Allergy + Infectious Diseases.

Contributing: Michael M. DeWitt, Jr., Bluffton Today; Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY

Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@gannett.com and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.

Ahjané Forbes is a reporter on the National Trending Team at USA TODAY. Ahjané covers breaking news, car recalls, crime, food recalls, health, lottery, and public policy stories. Email her at aforbes@gannett.com. Follow her on Instagram, Threads and X (Twitter) @forbesfineest.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Escaped monkeys in SC: 1 monkey caught after Alpha Genesis escape

25 monkeys recovered after escape from South Carolina facility, 18 still loose

David Matthews, New York Daily News
Mon, November 11, 2024 

More than half of the monkeys that escaped a medical research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, last week have been recovered, but 18 remain on the loose.

One was recaptured on Saturday and 24 more caught on Sunday.

The recovered animals were unharmed, officials said.

A “sizeable group” of the remaining rhesus monkeys are milling around near the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center‘s fences but are hunkering down and sleeping in nearby trees at night.

The tiny monkeys, which are about the size of a house cat, are all females.

The animals escaped Wednesday when an employee didn’t lock a door after feeding and checking on the monkeys.

The facility, local police and federal health officials said the animals posed no risk to the public but warned people to stay away as to avoid agitating the creatures, which would make their recapture more difficult. A spokesperson for Alpha Genesis said the monkeys were too young to have been used in any testing yet and weren’t carrying diseases.

The company breeds monkeys at its facility, about 50 miles northeast of Savannah, Ga., to sell for medical testing and research.

Monkeys have escaped from the facility at least two other times since 2014, drawing scrutiny from animal rights advocates.


18 escaped rhesus macaques remain on the loose in South Carolina

Mark Moran
Sun, November 10, 2024 at 6:50 p.m. MST·2 min read


A wild Rhesus macaque monkey carries her infant in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2021. 43 primates of this type escaped from an enclosure Wednesday at the Alpha Genesis research facility in Yemassee, S.C. 18 remained on the loose Sunday. Photo by Monirul Alam/EPA-EFE

Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Nearly half of the 43 monkeys that escaped from a research facility in Yemassee, S.C., have been recovered, local police said Sunday, but 18 remain on the loose.

Police said that the recovered macaques have undergone veterinary exams and are reported to be in good health, but a "sizable group remains active along the fence line and at this time have bedded down in the trees for the night," police said in a statement Sunday.

The rhesus macaque primates escaped from the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center on Wednesday. The company's Chief executive officer, Greg Westergaard, told police Saturday that recovery efforts will continue "for as long as it takes," according to a statement.

Among the largest in the nation, the facility specializes in nonhuman primate research for the biomedical research community. It is designed specifically for monkeys, and has more than 100 acres of land for research and breeding purposes, according to its website.

Alpha Genesis rescue team members are using specially designed traps that contain a trap door to try to recover the primates that are still outside the facility.

Local residents have been asked to stay away from the monkeys and to keep their doors and windows closed as team members work to recover the macaques that have yet to be rescued.

"The primates continue to interact with their companions inside the facility, which is a positive sign," the YPD said of the monkeys that still have not been captured.

The macaques escaped Wednesday after a caretaker at the facility failed to properly secure a door on an enclosure containing 50 monkeys. Forty-three of them walked out, Westergaard told CBS News.

"It's really like follow-the-leader," he said. "You see one go and the others go."

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The UFO cloud does not change its location: NASA already investigates it

by More M.
November 8, 2024


futurism.com

There has been a mysterious discovery in New Zealand, and it has captured the public’s attention and many are asking questions about its origins. The unusual appearance of this cloud has caused NASA to investigate further and find out what it is all about. Because of the cloud’s peculiar characteristics, both experts and the general public are speculating about potential causes, with some considering the possibility of extraterrestrial interference.

The mysterious cloud’s nature: What it’s all about and how it came to be

A strange, extended cloud is tucked along a rugged mountain range in a September 7 satellite image released by the space agency. The odd-looking cloud formation frequently appears in the same location, so locals call it the “Taieri Pet.” According to NASA, the unusual cloud is an altocumulus standing lenticular cloud (ASLC), formed when winds come into contact with a steep obstruction like a mountain range.

As the air at the wave’s crest cools sufficiently to produce water vapour, which condenses into clouds, winds are swept up and create a standing wave. The powerful winds that sweep through the cloud as it forms on the wave’s crest cause it to stay nearly motionless in the sky. This description sounds like a man-made fiction science story, but in essence, it is all true.

It is well known that lenticular clouds are created when humid air passes over mountain ranges and condenses into lens-shaped structures at high elevations. NASA is interested in examining this particular cloud since it defies the normal dynamics by neither evaporating nor changing position with changing air currents. NASA’s involvement raises the possibility that this cloud could provide new information about weather patterns or atmospheric behaviour.

NASA’s strategy for studying the UFO cloud doesn’t alter its position

NASA’s observation focuses on key elements that could answer the question as to why the UFO cloud does not move or change its position in places such as temperature fluctuations, localised air pressure zones, and the impact of the surrounding landscape. NASA is keeping a careful eye on the cloud using satellite photography to record any changes in altitude, density, or structure.

This observation might show if certain atmospheric conditions are responsible for the cloud’s stability or if another, unidentified mechanism is at work. When paired with weather station data, satellite analysis may also assist in identifying whether electromagnetic forces or other environmental elements that are not typically linked to cloud formation are responsible for the cloud’s persistence.

NASA intends to gain a better understanding of any distinct atmospheric events that can result in comparable formations in other regions of the planet by analysing the variables at work. The Taieri Pet is actually the product of some very powerful natural forces, which is why its edges are so sharp. Not surprisingly, NASA warns that flying close to clouds can be dangerous and cause extreme turbulence.

Public opinions, reactions and speculations

The public reactions to this mystery have been different throughout. Some people see it as a scientific, natural reaction to the changes of nature and some believe it signifies that there could be extraterrestrial activity. Images and videos of the cloud are going viral on social media due to its UFO-like appearance and stillness. Given its seemingly strange behaviour, some have even conjectured that it might be concealing or masking an unknown flying object.

NASA is involved in this whole situation and people are just fascinated by the whole idea. What is actually fueling excitement and fascination is NASA’s move to study the cloud and talk about it as the public is waiting for official explanations. The mystery surrounding this creation appeals to our curiosity about the unknown and the potential for events beyond Earth’s atmospheric bounds, even if NASA’s inquiry is supported by science.