There’s a colony of about 300 rhesus monkeys in the Silver Springs area that were brought in in the 1940’s.
Also there have been “local” sightings, for 50+ years, of monkeys in N.W. St. Johns County (think St. Agustine) as well as mountain goats, chimps, parrots and other animals.
Do you have more info on that? I lived in NW St. Johns County for 15 years, and never heard anything about that.
Yes, Silver Springs was where I was trying to recall.
Silver Springs, near Ocala had monkeys brought in for the Tarzan movies that were filmed there. Johnny Weissmuller. They kind of over ran the place until the 80s when they were the target of suppliers of animals for lab experiments. That pretty much wiped them out.
There is also a small colony of spider monkeys on an island in Homassassa, appropriately called Monkey Island.