What Tooey apparently did not realize is that rhesus macaques are strong swimmers. The monkeys promptly swam away from the island and took up residence in the forest surrounding the river.
Undeterred, Tooey and other operators used food to lure the monkeys to shore for passengers’ pleasure. The scheme worked so well that Tooey dispatched another six macaques to the river in 1948.
It turned out that the monkeys were well-suited to the lush forests of central
Florida. By 1980 there were an estimated 400 macaques roaming the area around the river.
The monkeys’ natural habitat spans thousands of miles of Asia, where they are found from Afghanistan to the Pacific coast of China, Johnson said. They have the largest range of any non-human primate.
About 25% of the monkeys harbor herpes B, which can be fatal to humans, and 4-14% of them were found to be “shedding the virus orally by mouth” – meaning a bite could transmit the virus.
“There’s a low risk, but very high consequence should something happen. Fortunately nothing has happened yet, but I wouldn’t want to have that looming over me if I was the state,” Johnson said.
As Johnson points out, there is no easy solution.
“If I was the manager I would want to try to have them removed,” he said.
“But it’s not an easy decision and it won’t be an easy task. It’s a lose-lose with the stakeholders. You’re gonna hurt a bunch of people if you decide to go in and remove them, and people aren’t gonna be happy with you if you allow them to stay.
“So it’s a complicated situation, no doubt.”