The Crash and Killing
On Tuesday, a truck said to be carrying 21 rhesus macaques—boxed in wooden crates and shipped like cargo—flipped on a Mississippi freeway.
The crash turned several of these crates into “crumbled and strewn about” splinters. From the debris, several small (estimated 12-40 pound) prisoners managed to do what their captors feared most: break free.
But most didn’t get far.
Law enforcement “destroyed” them after hunting them down with assault rifles, telling the public that the victim animals needed to be “neutralized.”
Video footage shows monkeys sitting in and walking through grass, while law enforcement characterizes them as “on the prowl.”
In reality, these animals were likely experiencing some of their only moments of quasi-freedom—and some were experiencing the last moments of their lives.
After the crash, local law enforcement confirmed that “all but three of the escaped monkeys have been killed,” and boasted of having been “in contact with an animal diposal [sic] company to help handle the situation,” including by taking “the carcasses at the scene.”
But the death toll might actually be higher. A Mississippi resident has bragged about shooting one of the monkeys to death, and another monkey was claimed to have been captured by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
The rest—those “unable to break free from their cages”—were returned to the very institution that put them on the truck: Tulane University’s National Biomedical Research Center. (Later reports state that the monkeys are “now in the possession of their owner en route to their intended destination.”)
Hiding the Truth
For its part, Tulane has refused to answer even the most basic questions, much less take any responsibility . . . or express any empathy.
Despite direct media inquiries, Tulane has refused to say how many monkeys escaped, how many have been killed, who the monkeys “belong to” (Tulane would only state that the monkeys “belong to another entity,” though they “were taken from its research center”), who was transporting them, or where they were going.
(As the Associated Press has observed, this incident “is the latest glimpse into the secretive industry of animal research and the processes that allow key details of what happened to be kept from the public.”)
What Tulane is reported to have verbalized, however, is a direct law enforcement to shoot any monkeys who “leave the wreck site.” Tulane would not respond to questions about why the escapees were executed.
We shouldn’t be surprised. This is how the animal research industry operates: secrecy, always; transparency and accountability, never.
The 21 monkeys—chillingly referred to as “specimens” by media—were en route from Tulane to an unnamed “testing facility” in Florida. Tulane won’t say which one, but, based on 2024 USDA records, likely destinations include the University of Miami, The Mannheimer Foundation, or the Florida Institute of Technology—all Florida-based labs that reported research on primates last year.
Tulane’s Cages and Abuse
Though we may not yet know the monkeys’ intended destination, we do know exactly where they came from.
Tulane is home to one of the nation’s seven, NIH-funded national primate research centers: the Tulane National Primate Research Center, which just changed its name to the “Tulane National Biomedical Research Center.” It’s a 500-acre facility “[c]omprised of grids of cages, administrative buildings and laboratories” that breeds animals for research, trades in their bodies with an estimated 500 investigators from more than 155 institutions globally….,” and itself exploits them in the name of “science.”
Public records further tell us that:
- In 2025, Tulane held at least 4,277 rhesus macaques under its USDA Class B dealer license.
- In 2024, Tulane reported 4,888 nonhuman primates “being bred, conditioned, or held for use in teaching, testing, experiments, research or surgery,” as well as 773 others actively being used for experimentation.
- In 2024, Tulane was issued an official warning by the USDA for failing to provide basic protections for its primates. A December 2023 inspection had found that “40 outdoor field enclosures” did “not provide adequate shelter from the elements.” The USDA also documented unacceptable “[c]leaning, sanitization, housekeeping, and pest control.”
- In 2023, one of its female monkeys was found dead in her cage after becoming “entrapped in the enclosure.”
And, Tulane has also taken public heat for certain of its experiments on primates, including one in which “monkeys were spun at high rates of speed and had their vomiting rated,” one in which monkeys “lost use of their limbs” after having had their “nerves cut for an experiment on spinal cord injuries,” and one in which “human nipples were sewn onto male monkeys.”
Monkeys Desperate for Escape
This is the institution now behind the most public escape of primates used for research since the 2024 Alpha Genesis debacle, when 43 monkeys fled the company’s South Carolina breeding facility —only to be dragged back, one by one.
And, here’s a kicker: Tulane and Alpha Genesis are in business together.
Public records obtained by Rise for Animals show that the Tulane National Primate Research Center purchased monkeys from Alpha Genesis as recently as June of this year.
Ultimately, then—and despite the industry’s deafening silence—this crash only further pulls back the curtain on the perverse reality of animal research.
Exposing an Industry Built on Cruelty
It’s an industry in which living beings are:
Institutionalized.
Forced to breed.
Stuffed into wooden boxes.
Shipped like cargo to suffer and die in experiments.
And, killed—potentially with AR-style weapons—when they dare to run . . . or just take a walk through the grass.
This is how the animal research industry chooses to operate—because it can.
But it doesn’t have to stay this way. Not if we stand together and say: no more.
You Can Protect Primates
Your Call to Action: Call on your legislators to oppose additional funding for primate research infrastructure in the final FY 2026 appropriations bill.
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