I’m not going to lie to you, dear reader: I go fucking wild for escaped animal yarns. The mere mention of a captive beast breaking loose from its bonds and wreaking havoc in the world at large elicits from me an enthusiastic and nigh unstoppable hooting and hollering.
Those capybaras that escaped from Toronto Zoo? I love them. Every time that birds escape from Taronga Zoo? I can’t get enough. This hippo that escaped from a zoo in Israel for two minutes before promptly turning around? She is my daughter. This octopus that snuck out of an aquarium in New Zealand? Inject it to directly into my veins (the feeling obviously, not the octopus).
Each of these stories is a miniature Jurassic Park, a cautionary tale of control and hubris – a parable on the certainty with which we believe we can control nature and nature’s absolute refusal to play by our rules.
Proud creatures that we are, we believe that the baboons we keep in our baboon enclosure will never escape. We think we’re smarter than baboons, because they throw poo at each other while we, on the other hand, have invented the 3D television. But what use is that 3D television when the baboons have a barrel? I will tell you: it is no use. You cannot contain them.
As the AP reports, staff at the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas were understandably perturbed on Saturday afternoon when four baboons managed to hoof it over the perimeter fence. Local news station KSAT reported that the baboons got out by rolling a 55-gallon drum up to a wall, flipping it on its side, and using it to climb over. Genius. According to the research facility, the barrel was in there as an “enrichment tool” that allowed the baboons to simulate foraging activity.
Three of the baboons were recovered by staff within 30 minutes, with the fourth returning of its own volition.
There are 1,100 baboons housed in the facility, representing a fair chunk of the roughly 2,500 animals on site, all of which are used for biomedical research. Imagine what they could do if they all worked together.
