Many are asking how four baboons escaped their outdoor enclosure at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute on Saturday.
Watching a troop of baboons run, and roam, and forage, and play is a breathtaking sight. So is seeing a baboon out for a stroll along Military Drive, which is what happened this past weekend. He's one of four young male baboons that managed to escape a six-acre habitat that 133 of them call home.
John C. Bernal, DVM, the head veterinarian at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute and Associate Director for the Southwest National Primate Research Center said, "Typically they are not aggressive animals. They are wild. They are very intelligent animals so they are easy to work with, and breed very well in captivity."
Four of the baboons showed the animal care staff just how smart they are at about 3:30 Saturday afternoon by taking a barrel used for food and using it to their advantage.
The animal care staff says the animals rolled a 55-gallon barrel into an upright position. That barrel was close enough to the wall that it gave them the opportunity to climb on top of the wall and escape the enclosure. "Three of them stayed together and the other one split off and came back around and went back into the corral, which is what we prefer to happen," Bernal said.
Those three made it to Military Drive. Two stayed in the brush. "The other one presumably made himself through the tree line and of course got into a very strange situation," said Bernal.
It was a situation that startled drivers and came to an end 20 to 30 minutes later when all were safely captured, and the method of escape removed. Bernal told us, "When we found the barrel was the culprit for the escape, we immediately took the barrels out of the corral."
All four baboons are part of their breeding program and are not used for research. "In this case, those particular baboons are not on any type of study," Bernal said.