A young macaque that escaped from a wildlife park near Lake Constance in southern Germany was caught in an apple tree at a campsite after spending the night unaccompanied, park manager Roland Hilgartner told dpa on Saturday.
The Barbary macaque managed to escape its enclosure at the Salem Monkey Mountain Wildlife Park and was last spotted near a highway near the town of Uhldingen-Muhlhofen. Hilgartner said he believes the macaque jumped from tree to tree to get around the fence around its enclosure.
“If they are a little bit athletic, they can jump there,” he said.
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.
On Saturday, people saw the macaque and alerted police, Hilgartner said.
“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.
He previously told dpa that macaques could survive just fine outside the park, at least for now, since zookeepers only need to feed the primates 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.”
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 estimated at fewer 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.