Tamil, a 6-year-old lion-tailed macaque from the Howletts Animal Park in Kent, disappeared on Tuesday night.Zoo officials believe Tamil escaped after tussling with other macaques in his enclosure amid a battle for dominance.
“This happens when they don’t know each other,” Kit Opie, an evolutionary anthropologist at University College London, told The Telegraph. “After a while they fall into a dominance hierarchy with an alpha male but if they don’t know each other then there is often aggression while they establish that.
“If you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy, it’s likely your position will be made very clear. To run away from aggression is the reasonable response of any primate,” he added.
Tamil so far has evaded traps set up around the animal park and searches of the area have yielded nothing.
An electric fence surrounds his enclosure, and “Tamil would have received a shock -- but in this case it was not enough to stop him,” Animal Director Adrian Harland told The Telegraph.
Harland is warning members of the public to not approach Tamil as macaques are aggressive brawlers.
Kent police and the local government have been informed of the missing monkey and are on the lookout.
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