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These Cute Critters Made a Florida Family Flee

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With the release of the newest “Planet of the Apes” film, a monkey attack sounds like something straight out of fiction.

Only, it’s not.

Earlier this summer, a family from Estero, Florida had a run-in with some wild rhesus monkeys – and a pretty scary one at that.

In a video posted to You Tube showing part of the confrontation, seemingly cute Rhesus monkeys charge and scream at thebewildered guests of Silver Springs State Park, near Ocala, Florida.

This isn’t the first time the rhesus monkeys have caused a stir.

Ocala Resident Brian Pritchard captured images of the monkeys swarming his deer feeder.

"I went to check on the deer feeder, and pulled my deer cam off, my game cam, to check the pictures and realized that I had 1,100 pictures of monkeys,” he told the CBC Radio show, As it Happens. “They were just on the deer feeder, feeding, climbing all over it. There were a bunch of them. There was upwards 50 in there at one time.”

Although they may look cute, Pritchard said the animals are not to be trifled with. "They can be vicious. They're very temperamental in my book. I mean I've had them jump in my boat going down the river. Obviously that's the ones that get fed all the time,” Pritchard said. “But in my books they're disgusting,” he continued. “They're absolutely nasty. They carry a herpes B virus, I'm sure there's a few other things they carry.”

"I keep my distance,” Pritchard added.

Bizarre and dangerous animals are nothing new to Floridians – alligators, deadly snakes, banana spiders, and panthers all call the state home.

There have even been sightings of saltwater crocodiles in southern Florida.  And earlier this year, one county resorted to paying hunters who could kill pythons – not native to the state – found roaming the swamps. 

And the recent monkey business has a lot of people wondering how wild primates got to the central pocket of the sunshine state in the first place.

One theory rests on the claim that monkeys were used in filming one of the “Tarzan” movies in 1939, which ironically took place near where the You Tube video was shot, and escaped and multiplied in the jungle-like environment.

But according to expert Dr. Linda Wolfe - an Advisory Board member for International Primate Protection League (IPPL) – the real reason is quite different, and much odder. Wolfe says a man called “Colonel Tooey” led boat tours decades ago. In the spirit of entrepreneurship, and the desire to give his guests an authentic, jungle experience, he put monkeys on an island he built in the Silver River in the late 1930s.

Wolfe says Tooey was under the impression his monkeys were a different species – a type that couldn’t swim - until it was too late. The rhesus escaped the island and spread through the surrounding area. 

Around 200 rhesus monkeys still reside in the Silver River area.

 

Sources: CBC, Fox News

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