Cruising the Silver River feels like you’ve gone across the world and back in time. — Quincy Dunn-Baker
I’ve been to Florida several times and have come to love the Sunshine State’s sandy beaches, beautiful warm weather, and abundance of water-related activities.
I’m also drawn to its varied and fascinating wildlife, both on land and underwater, where another world reveals itself. I’ve come to view manatees, sea turtles, crocodiles, dolphins, and reef-dwelling creatures as Florida icons, and these animals are perfectly suited to Florida’s diverse habitats.
But I recently learned of an animal that I never would have imagined being able to see in the wild in Florida—monkeys. And there’s good reason for that: they’re not native to this part of the world. While they fit right in in the jungle landscapes of Southeast Asia, where I've seen them crowding ancient temples reclaimed by nature, they seem a bizarre addition to the swampy forests of central Florida.
But it turns out that rhesus macaques have been thriving in the Silver Springs State Park area for close to 85 years. The Silver River is only an hour’s drive from Orlando, one of the state’s biggest and busiest cities, but monkey sightings have been recorded as far as 100 miles from Silver River.
Native to South, Central, and Southeast Asia, rhesus monkeys live and travel in troops. They’re extremely adaptable and can live anywhere—swamps, mountains, deserts, and even cities included—as long as there’s an abundant food source.
So it’s no surprise that they’re doing well in Florida, but how did they get here in the first place? Humans, of course.
A man by the name of Colonel Tooey ran a jungle cruise along the Silver River in the 1930s, and upon seeing the success of movies involving apes at the time, he thought wild monkeys would be an irresistible attraction that could enhance his business by bringing more tourists to the area.
So, he brought a small group here and released them on an island, expecting that they’d set up camp and be contained by the river—only, rhesus monkeys can swim, even as young as two days old!
“Within hours of arriving on the island, the pink-faced monkeys began escaping into the woods,” National Geographic writes in an article detailing the history of the monkeys.
But rather than stop there, Captain Tooey had six more monkeys brought in, and of course, they too promptly began expanding out into the surrounding forests. The docuseries episode I watched about the monkeys says that by the mid-1970s, six monkeys had turned into 80, and today, no one really knows exactly how many there are. In other words, the population continues to expand.
While this rapid expansion has been good for business, especially for the boat cruises that take locals and tourists to see the monkeys playing along the river’s edge, it’s also a cause for concern.
National Geographic reports that “scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that around 30 percent of these monkeys carry herpes B, a rare and highly virulent virus that can be deadly to humans.” Although the chances of humans contracting it are very slim, according to wildlife and ecology experts, the macaques have been known to be aggressive in encounters with humans.
This has led to a battle playing out between monkey supporters and opponents. On the one hand, you have tourists and locals fighting to keep the monkeys here because they enjoy viewing them and appreciate this rare opportunity to see them thriving, and because they're against capturing or killing them. And on the other hand, you have state departments and wildlife conservation commissions vying to remove the monkeys or put population control measures in place because of their potential to have detrimental effects on the environment and the area’s native plants and animals.
So, while taking a “jungle cruise” to watch monkeys frolicking around the banks of a remote Florida river would certainly be a unique way to spend an afternoon, it may not be the park’s main attraction in the future.
If you do decide to see them while they’re here, it’s important to remember that they can be dangerous. They are wild animals, after all, so don’t get close to them, don’t feed them, and whatever you do, don’t look them in the eye. Apparently, they see that as a threat!
The macaques live here year-round, but the best time to see them is early spring. Visitors can book a world-famous Glass Bottom Boat tour at the Silver Springs State Park or rent kayaks to paddle down the river themselves on a self-guided tour.