A radio station in Zimbabwe was temporarily forced off the air after a group of baboons raided a transmission tower and chewed through cables, a state daily reported on Thursday.

The Chronicle newspaper said the newly launched YA FM went down during the breakfast show on Wednesday, sending technicians into an emergency search to identify the problem.

“We initially thought it was the on-going load-shedding [power outage] programme … but we later realised the lights were on,” the paper quoted YA FM’s chief executive, Munyaradzi Hwengwere, as saying.

“We … discovered that our transmission tower which is in a mountainous place had been preyed on by baboons. I am told there were more than five of them that ate into the cables.”

The station was back on air after an hour, $1,200 poorer from the loss of advertising revenue during the disruption.