DANIA BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - A vervet monkey is on the loose in South Florida, and experts say there’s a particular motive driving his escape: he’s on a mission to find a partner.
The primate, called Ninja Joe, has been spotted across neighborhoods in the Fort Lauderdale area in recent days.
But every time Dr. Missy Williams, founder of the Dania Beach Vervet Project, heads to a recent sighting, Joe isn’t anywhere to be found.
Williams, who spoke with 7News on Sunday, isn’t monkeying around.
“He left his needle group, and he’s currently out searching for love in Fort Lauderdale, not knowing that there are limited choices out there, so we’re rooting for him,” she said. “I would argue that most people in the dating pool in South Florida would agree, regardless of what species, the dating pool is limited.”
No monkey business here. Williams has been fielding tips all week in hopes of finding the primate.
It’s known that at around 5 years old, male vervet monkeys become sexually mature, wanting to answer the call of the wild.
“What we’re having is classic male behavior,” said Williams, “so when an adult vervet reaches about the age of 5, sexual maturity kicks in, and at that point, these males will leave their social groups, and they’re out looking to find love, so to speak.”
Williams explained how vervet monkeys native to Africa came to be in Florida.
“It’s a great Florida story. The Dania Beach Chimpanzee Farm was opened in the late ’40s by Layla Roosevelt and her partner Amon Dennis,” she said. “They were importing primates in from Africa to be sold in the biomedical trade. However, a group of crafty vervet monkeys escaped in 1947, 1948, and they never caught them. It was a group of about 12 to 15.”
In 2016, Williams established the Dania Beach Vervet Project, a nonprofit whose purpose is merging animal welfare and conservation, promoting awareness and encouraging peaceful co-existence of human-wildlife interactions for free-ranging vervet monkeys in Dania Beach.
Williams said the monkey’s origin story in Florida makes some feel proud they’re here.
“It’s a very cool story, a very, very, cool story. It’s a Florida story,” she said. “The locals love the monkeys, and the Dania Beach community is actually proud to say, ‘Hey, guess what: we have wild monkeys right here in our state.'”
Williams advises anyone who spots Ninja Joe to refrain from chasing him and instead send a message to Dania Beach Vervet Project on Facebook or its website with the location.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.