An escaped young macaque was still roaming free in southern Germany near Lake Constance on Saturday, causing quite a stir in the local community.
The Barbary macaque has escaped from the Salem Monkey Mountain wildlife park in the region. Park manager Roland Hilgartner suspects the animal jumped from tree to tree to jump over the fence around the enclosure.
2If they are a little bit athletic, they can jump there,” he said.
The animal was last seen on Friday morning along the road near the town of Uhldingen-Mühlhofen.
“No animal has ever been this far away,” said Hilgartner, who has worked at the park for 17 years.
The fence of the enclosure is designed to make it very difficult for the animals to get out — but they can still climb back in from the outside. Hilsgartner said it is common for macaques that go outside to come back.
“The pressure to be with the group, in a familiar environment, is great,” he said.
However, he believes the unnamed macaque could do just fine outside the park, at least for now, since zookeepers only need to feed the macaques in the winter. There is plenty of plant food and the animals also eat insects, he said.
The flora and fauna on both sides of the fence are no different, Hilgartner said, “and they might even find an apple or two in the orchards.”
On Friday, police and Monkey Mountain staff attempted to lure the young animal down from a tree with food, but the primate fled into a larger forest area.
The gray-brown Barbary macaques are native to the mountainous regions of Morocco and Algeria and are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
According to the park, the global population of Barbary macaques is less than 8,000.
At Monkey Mountain, nearly 200 animals live in a 20-hectare forest area, as they would in the wild. Visitors can walk through the enclosure and get quite close to the animals.
