She is 2 years old. She weighs five pounds. She goes only by Ep13.
And she desperately wants to find her way home.
The young rhesus monkey, who has been missing from a Lawrenceville-based research facility since June 15, is almost certainly looking for food, sleep and her family, researchers said.
Ep13 did not run away from Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center Field Station, they believe. She ran because that's what monkeys do. Now she's probably running to return to those familiar comforts.
"She's probably freaking out trying to get back in," said Christine Drea, a Duke University professor who studies mammalian social behavior and did her doctoral research at Yerkes. "My guess is that she ran, took advantage of the opportunity and is probably regretting it now."
But even with a natural desire to return home, Ep13 remains an elusive fugitive.
Rhesus macaques are notoriously hard to capture. They're smart, fast and adaptable. The only primates with a broader geographic distribution across the Earth are humans.
Perhaps she fled into the nearby woods. Maybe she found shelter in the surrounding Gwinnett County suburbs. Maybe she kept going, venturing far outside of metro Atlanta. Yerkes has taken calls from people in other counties claiming to have seen her.
Or maybe, as Yerkes officials believe, Ep13 could still be somewhere in or around the 117-acre facility. There are plenty of places for a monkey to hide at the field station. Twenty-five open-air compounds -- each about the size of a soccer field -- cover about one-third of the property and the rest is flush with wooded areas.
"What we know is that rhesus monkeys are social animals," said Lisa Newburn, a Yerkes spokeswoman. "Young ones wants to stay close to their family. That's what she knows."
Yerkes officials met Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to discuss steps they have taken. The USDA issued a brief report summing up that the search was still inconclusive.
Staff members are now going through the compounds, scrutinizing each monkey for the identifying tattoo on their chest. This will take time. Yerkes is home to 1,899 rhesus macaques and 2,220 animals overall. They're also scouring the research center's grounds.
If that doesn't work, the next step would likely be setting out fruit-laden traps.
Wildlife trappers said Yerkes' best hope is that Ep13 somehow finds her way back home.
"They tend to come back," said Joe Perez, an Orlando-based trapper. "Macaques are extremely social."
The longer she stays on the run, the greater the chances that she'll find trouble. Because of her age and inexperience with the outside world, Ep13 is especially vulnerable.
She could be mauled by a German shepherd. She might be electrocuted while climbing power lines. She could run into the path of an oncoming car. She could fall victim to a scared human.
"It's unlikely that [Yerkes] will get it back and unlikely that it will be OK," said Agustin Fuentes, an anthology professor at Notre Dame, who has studied rhesus macaques extensively. "It's the equivalent of a 10-year-old child off by themselves in a new environment without knowing what's going on."
Yerkes officials and other researchers have repeatedly said Ep13 is not a threat to people.
She is one of many specially bred rhesus macaques that do not have the herpes B virus, a disease common to the species. The monkey was in the process of being assigned to a behavioral-research study and not part of a scientific study in which it would have been infected with any number of diseases.
"My apprehension is more about how people will deal with it," Drea said. "People aren’t usually very bright in these sorts of situations. The monkey is going to fare fine if left to its own devices."
Ep13 left behind her mother and two younger brothers. Yerkes staff said her mother has probably noticed that she is gone but is likely consumed with nursing her youngest son, which was born in late May.
And somewhere out there, Ep13, if she is still alive, is trying to get back to them. A monkey so young will not want to strike out on her own.
Running was probably exhilarating for the first few hours, if not the first few days. But being alone is hard for a monkey.
"From what we know about them," Newbern said, "we think she would want to be with her family."
About the Author
