Thursday, March 26, 2009

Safari park seals off monkey enclosure after virus discovery

4:23pm Thursday 26th March 2009


Longleat Safari Park near Warminster has sealed off its drive-through monkey enclosure after one of the females tested positive for the Simian Herpes virus.

After carrying out routine testing of the monkey colony, one of the female monkeys was found to have contracted the virus.

The whole group have now been tested and all the other monkeys have proven to be negative.

But despite this, Longleat is keeping its Monkey Jungle closed to drive-through traffic until further tests on the affected monkey have been undertaken Longleat has tested its monkeys regularly since 2000 and the tests have been carried out with the Health Protection Agency at Colindale.

The safari park is now investigating how the monkey contracted the virus

No comments: