Saturday, April 4, 2009

Remember the movie 'Outbreak?' There's a real monkey on the loose somewhere in Oregon carrying a virus that could harm people!

In a case of fiction blurring into reality, we have a Japanese Macaque monkey who escaped from his handlers and is carrying a potentially human-threatening virus! They say truth is often stranger than fiction, and I think there's something to that.

In the movie Outbreak a White-fronted Capuchin monkey passes on the deadly Motaba virus and it ends up in a fictional little northern California town - Cedar Creek - which was actually filmed in Ferndale,  Humboldt County.

The movie was released in 1995 and starred Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, and Cuba Gooding Jr., just to name some of the good actors in it. 

In this short press release by the Associated Press, they note that the "monkey's are too fast to catch." Say what? This seems to get stranger by the day. There's a virus-carrying monkey on the prowl...

Today's story from AP: 

Officials say three monkeys on the loose at the Oregon National Primate Research Center are hanging out near "corrals" on the campus, but the whereabouts of a fourth are unknown.

They are among nine who escaped Friday when a keeper left their cage unlocked. Five were recaptured.

Jim Newman, an Oregon Health & Science University spokesman, said today that veterinarians are watching the three Japanese Macaque monkeys, hoping they will be lured into cages baited with apples.

He says the missing monkey is believed to be on or near the Beaverton campus.

The monkeys are too fast to catch. They generally retreat from humans but if threatened, they could bite. One carries a virus that could harm people.

Monkey Image via www.peopleandwildlife.org.uk/newsimages/Japan

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