Content Warning: This story includes explicit language used by law enforcement and video footage depicting violence against animals, including the shooting and killing of monkeys. Viewer discretion is advised.
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“We’re gonna have to shoot ‘em.
Apparently they’re lab rats.”
After the trailer transporting them from one type of prison to another crashed between two lanes of a major interstate, panicked monkeys found themselves at the mercy of state officials and law enforcement officers—who weren’t there to protect them.
Instead, they stood ready with weapons raised, fingers twitching . . . and one-liners at the ready:
“Never thought I’d spend my day
shootin fuckin monkeys.”
“Dude, I don’t care if you get bananas. Freakin Mario Kart this bitch.”
“We gonna be famous” “so smile big.”
Laughter, Slurs, and Loaded Guns
Throughout the ordeal, they laughed. They cracked jokes. They minimized and mocked the lives of sentient beings who were simply trying to survive.
They called the monkeys “motherfuckers,” “damn things,” “son of a bitches,” “bastards,” “jokers,” “fuckers.”
They tased one—and seemed proud of it.
They emptied assault rifles, then joked about needing more ammo.
“Need another magazine or what?” (Laughter.)
“We gonna get a shotgun.”
“That shotgun will freaking get ‘em.”
They asked about silencers and flash grenades.
They suggested luring the monkeys to their deaths: using “a distraction to get them out of the cage” and then “drop[ping] ‘em as they come.”
The Killing Was a Choice, Not a Necessity
And, they misled: law enforcement claimed they had no choice but to kill the monkeys. Only, their own records suggest otherwise.
Before a single monkey was executed, an audio recording shows a local, USDA-licensed primate sanctuary experienced in caring for lab survivors called and offered help, including quarantine, housing, and care.
Law enforcement also knew a tranquilizer team was en route—only they didn’t want to wait the three hours it would take for the team to arrive. So, instead, they set about “getting permission right now to just start opening fire.”
And, then they did.
Even monkeys still inside the trailer—monkeys not on the move, not fleeing, not posing any “threat”—were gunned down.
In their official records, officers claimed they were ordered “to shoot the monkeys that were loose from their cages in order to keep them from escaping.” The implication, of course, being that lethal force was necessary to contain them.
But, body camera footage tells a different story: one of the transport drivers is recorded directing an officer to shoot all monkeys who had broken free from their cages, even if they remained in the crashed trailer and even if containment was otherwise possible.
“Fuck it. You gotta shoot it . . .
Every one that’s loose has gotta go down.”
Later, officers are recorded shooting into the crashed trailer—including at a monkey peacefully sitting and looking out.
One Officer Asked a Good Question, Though the Answer Didn’t Matter
Only one officer is recorded daring to even question what was being done.
He can be heard asking whether the monkeys are already infected with disease or *just* on their way to being infected. The officer he’s speaking to—who says he’s about to get his AR to start killing—admits he doesn’t know. The first replies, “[t]hat’d be a big thing to know.”
Yes, it certainly would’ve been, and it raises a telling point (with later reports indicating that the monkeys were “not infected with COVID-19, hepatitis or herpes as had been previously reported,” and that the lone surviving escapee, who spent a week on the lam, was sent to sanctuary) . . . though it likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Killing Due to Disillusionment, Not Danger
These monkeys weren’t killed because they posed an imminent, physical threat. They were killed because they crossed an imaginary line . . .
As Sarat Colling writes in Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era, when animals escape captivity—when they become visible, individualized, and out-of-place—they’re perceived as threats to the social order and dangerous, which legitimizes violence against them. (Interestingly, Colling provides multiple examples of monkeys escaping from Tulane!)
. . . because they didn’t hold value to the people with the guns . . .
The officers didn’t see lives worth saving. They—in their own words—saw only “lab rats.”
. . . and because they became a liability for those entities with the power to control the people with the guns.
The monkeys’ seller (Tulane), buyer (Bioqual), and transporter (Wildlife Transportation Facilitators) didn’t offer help or non-lethal options—only instructions that the animals be gunned down at the side of the road.
These animals were executed because they had become inconvenient for the animal research industry.
Animals who transgress human-imposed boundaries are often punished for the simple act of being seen—because their escape shatters the truth their exploiters desperately try to hide: their victims are not anonymous, disposable objects.
They’re individuals, who are desperate to live.
They Fought to Live
And, on the side of the Mississippi interstate, they fought for their lives—even in their final moments.
The officers couldn’t ignore it, commenting repeatedly on how “strong” and “tough” the monkeys were:
“I hit that fucker twice
and he kept fuckin movin.”
“I’m tellin you them jokers are strong . . . They ain’t gonna go down.”
“He started fuckin crawlin.”
“I’m shootin full metal jackets. FMJs . . . I know I shot the one in the trailer. He just looked at me and then he started rollin. Then he got back up and went back in the trailer.”
“You gonna have to hit midsection or in the head on em, they’re not gonna quit movin.”
“Aim for the head,
cuz I shot that one ago twice,
he kept movin.”
Despite everything—their incarceration, the crash, the bullets—they still had hope.
Hope for a life not defined by cages.
Hope for the woods just across the road.
Hope for something different than the past—and the present—forced upon them by humans.
All hopes dashed not by some tragic accident, but by human choice.
The choices made by the animal research industry and the Mississippi officers—to kill the escaped monkeys—exemplify the realities of the animal industrial complex, which exists to treat living beings as disposable commodities and takes great pains to hide its victims from public view.
We Bore Witness and Must Now Carry the Truth
Because nothing threatens the industry more than animals who refuse to die quietly—and, nothing exposes its violence more than those who try to escape it.
We can all watch this unfold in real time.
And, then we must carry the truth forward—until, together, we stop the violence.