After four days on the run which kept the British in suspense, a Japanese macaque escaped from a Scottish zoo was captured Thursday in a garden where it had come to look for food, the park announced.
Honshu, whose species is also known as the snow monkey, had been tracked using drones with thermal cameras since he managed to escape from his enclosure at Highland Wildlife Park, located in the middle of the mountains and forests of the Cairngorms National Park (northeast Scotland).
“Following a call received just after 10 a.m., our keepers and team of drone pilots went to a private garden where the monkey was feeding in a bird feeder, and they "They managed to catch him using a tranquilizer dart
," Keith Gilchrist, one of the zoo's managers, explained in a statement.
The young monkey must be examined by a veterinarian before being reunited with the other subadult males in its group, he said.
Honshu was spotted on Wednesday and tracked for 45 minutes using drones, but it was safer to capture him at a time when he was not roaming free.
The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland had assured that this male was not considered dangerous to humans or domestic animals, but had however advised against approaching him.