Police say the roughly 30 rhesus macaques were freed early Sunday after someone broke a lock on their enclosures at a primate research facility

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Authorities say more than two dozen monkeys have been set free in Puerto Rico after someone broke a lock on their enclosures at a primate research facility.

Police say the roughly 30 rhesus macaques were freed early Sunday from the Caribbean Primate Research Center in the northern town of Toa Baja.

The facility established in the late 1930s is a unit of the University of Puerto Rico. It supplies monkeys for use in studies of diseases that afflict people.

There have been no arrests. Authorities have launched an effort to recapture the monkeys.

Puerto Rico has long struggled with controlling wild monkeys that descended from escaped research monkeys.

Over the years, the US Caribbean island has euthanized hundreds of wild monkeys blamed for scavenging crops and damaging natural resources.