Nearly a week after the first reports of monkeys on the loose in St. Louis, and a fruitless search, officials there are shifting focus to find the animals’ owner.
Owning a monkey is against the law in St. Louis, said Justen Hauser, head of the city health department’s environmental health bureau.
“We have transitioned from responding to the reports of monkeys at large to a more enforcement of city ordinance,” Hauser told The Washington Post on Tuesday, adding: “There are people that may have monkeys.”
The saga — which has captivated locals and internet meme-makers alike — began Thursday. That’s when animal-control investigators received a report of at least one monkey near the rolling hills of O’Fallon Park in the northern St. Louis, Hauser said.
There were initial reports that there were four monkeys, but that number has not been verified, he added. Authorities are unsure how many of the animals could be running wild.
Hauser said investigators provided photos that had been posted by residents online to primate experts at the St. Louis Zoo, who identified the animal as a vervet monkey. Native to eastern and southern Africa, vervet monkeys weigh between 9 and 12 pounds, according to the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
St. Louis animal control asked the community to report sightings. And they did. But monkey-lovers near and far have also had fun with the hunt for the fugitive primates.
Doctored images posted online show vervet monkeys dressed in St. Louis Cardinals baseball jerseys or posing for a selfie with their faces painted blue and yellow for the St. Louis Blues hockey team.
Even the county got in on it, posting “Don’t worry, the monkeys are just here to take a tour of STL County parks” alongside edited images depicting the monkeys canoeing or sitting on a merry-go-round. (The posts also show a goat because one was briefly on the loose over the weekend, but was quickly captured.)
At the same time, less obviously altered AI-generated images have made the investigation more difficult by requiring investigators to determine whether the images were genuine.
“We did receive a tremendous amount of information from the community, but it was a challenge verifying the authenticity of that information,” Hauser said during a news conference.
St. Louis city code — chapter 10, section 24.010 — lays out what animals are illegal to “own, keep or harbor” in the city limits. That includes many animals, from “all types of lynxes” to “all non-human primates.”
Hauser said all charges and fees will be waived if anyone who owns or is sheltering the monkeys relinquishes them to authorities.
“We wanted to try and eliminate that fear of punishment,” he said.
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