Great Escapes: What Happens When Animals Make a Run for It?

From lab monkeys to zoo flamingos to very clever orangutans, animals have made some great escapes. Learn about them in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/animals-escapes.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vobebam.
Here Back in twenty twenty two, a fisherman off the
coast of Texas spied a puff of light pink feathers
perched on one leg. It was a flamingo. Flamingos are
not native to Texas and Nora's Texas anywhere on a

(00:24):
flamingo's normal migratory path. After tweeting a video of the bird,
Texas Parks and Wildlife confirmed that the birding question was
one Pink Floyd, a flamingo that escaped Kansas Zoo in
two thousand and five. For seventeen years, Pink Floyd had
traveled through Texas, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Louisiana as well a

(00:45):
free bird. There are no updates on it as of
this recording, but that Pink Floyd is not to be
confused with another flamingo on the run from an aviary,
the Pink Floyd of Utah's Salt Lake. Both of these
birds were able to assescape because their keepers hadn't kept
their wing feathers clipped, and they simply flew away. Today,

(01:07):
let's talk about some daring animal escapes. I will say
most of these stories have happy endings, but we do
discuss one injury and a few later deaths. Just want
to give you a heads up in case you frequently
visit does thedogdie dot com up or if like me,
you're a little bit on edge right now? Okay, okay,

(01:29):
first step, let's talk about the Saint Louis six. In
twenty seventeen, six steers and Saint Louis were sent to
a slaughterhouse, but they were not about to go quietly.
Led by a huge steer named Chico, six of them
broke out, as supposedly agitated by the rumblings of an
approaching thunderstorm. Likely scared by their freedom and the ruckus

(01:50):
had caused, they ran through the streets of Saint Louis
for hours. They evaded everybody while capturing the attention of
the media, animal lovers, and the local community. Authorities eventually
rounded the crew up, but by then the public had
also begun a campaign for their freedom. A non profit
animal sanctuary called the Gentle Barn stepped in to negotiate

(02:11):
with the slaughterhouse, which gave them twenty four hours to
find the Steers a new home, and that they did.
The six were sent to a rescue until enough funds
could be raised to build a new facility in Missouri
especially for them. Although one bull, a named Spirit, had
to be euthanized due to injuries sustained during his adventures,
and another Eddy has since died, the other four, named Houdini,

(02:34):
Johnny cash Rue, and their fearless leader Chico, now live
happily as therapy cows at the Gentle Barn location in Tennessee.
Next up the Dania Beach monkeys of Broward County, Florida.
In nineteen forty eight, fifty green monkeys escaped from the
Anthropoid Ape Research Foundation or ARFF. Green monkeys are a

(02:57):
species with fur in shades of gray, gold and a
little bit of green that weigh only a couple of
pounds or about a kilo. The ARFF was opened in
the early nineteen forties in South Florida as a zoo
and provide primates from Africa for the research for the
polio vaccine. After the monkeys escape, some were captured, but
the others started lives in the Florida wild. Now, more

(03:20):
than seventy years later, scientists from Florida Atlantic University have
been able to trace a colony of thirty six monkeys
thriving in the thick mangrove forest near the Fort Lauderdale
Airport to those remaining escapees. How partially because of that
green coloration, the researchers photographed every monkey at Dania Beach
and recorded various traits to help identify their species. They

(03:44):
also tested genetic markers and confirmed that the Dania Beach
monkeys are in fact descendants of those from West Africa. Today,
there's nonprofit the Vervet Project, whose goal is to build
a sanctuary for the monkeys to keep them safe from
human interactions. Of course, these monkeys aren't the only primates
to have broken free. The San Diego Zoo had an

(04:07):
orangutan known for pulling escape backs by the name of
Ken Allen. He first got out in nineteen eighty five,
scaling a wall and then strolling down the zoo's pedestrian
pathway and taking in the sites before being walked back
to his enclosure, which wasn't very enclosed. Zoo staff increased
the height of the wall by four feet that's a
little over a meter, but that didn't stop can Allen,

(04:30):
or the great Ape and even some of his ape
friends escaped an additional nine times. He was even known
to use tools to do it. When he was young,
he had unscrew the bolts of his nursery at night
and then put the pen back together before his caretakers
arrived the following morning. One time, he and his roommate Vicki,

(04:50):
used a discarded crowbar that he found in his pen
to open a window. After several escapes, the zoo tried
electric wire and even distracted him by att two female
rang attends to his enclosure. Nothing worked. Eventually, his female
counterparts A Jane and Kumeng picked up the behavior and
made their getaway using a window squeegee. A Ken Allen

(05:13):
died from cancer in the year two thousand, at twenty
nine years old. His status as a local hero long confirmed.
The Los Angeles Zoo has also had its fair share
of animal escapes. Of Virginia, a wolf escaped numerous times
during the seventies and eighties by climbing trees and fences,
and Evelyn, a Western Lowland gorilla, escaped her living arrangements

(05:36):
at least five times. Evelyn was creative with her getaways,
as she successfully jumped off the back of another gorilla
to go over a wall and used overgrown vines to
pull herself up and over the wall or to swing
over the twelve foot mote. That time, she didn't even
leave the zoo perimeter. She just roamed around for a
little over an hour and was, according to the Los

(05:58):
Angeles Times, behaving like a huge child. Evelyn was born
in the Los Angeles Zoo in nineteen seventy six, and
she lived to the truly impressive age of forty six years,
perhaps partially due to her irrepressible personality. Today's episode is

(06:19):
based on the article Great Escapes five wild Animals who
busted out and went on the run on how Stuffworks
dot Com, written by Alison Trautner. Brainstuff is production of
iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is
produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the Airheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.