Florida monkeys 😮😮😮

Did you know that wild #vervet #monkeys live near Fort Lauderdale?
For decades, a colony of wild African green monkeys has lived in a thick mangrove forest near the #FortLauderdale
But how on earth did these African monkeys find themselves in the area to begin with? Monkeys are not native to South Florida, so the mystery of how the primates ended up in the mangroves of Dania Beach had long been a source of local speculation and urban legend.
A team of researchers from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) announced that they had solved the mystery. Their study explains how a population of #Chlorocebus #sabaeus #monkeys have survived for decades in a novel environment in #SouthFlorida.
We traced the monkeys to an escape from the Dania Chimpanzee Farm in 1948,” wrote the researchers. “The facility imported primates from Africa for medical research purposes.”
It had long been suspected, but never before confirmed, that the monkeys’ ancestors were involved in a jailbreak from the facility, which had captured and imprisoned them with the intention of selling them to research labs studying polio, tuberculosis, and other conditions.
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