Nearly 100 Monkeys Escape Thai Shelter, Raid Lopburi Police Station

People in Lopburi, a city in central Thailand, woke up on June 30 to something that sounds like a movie plot. Nearly 100 monkeys had broken out of a government shelter overnight, and they were everywhere. They sprinted down roads, climbed on parked cars, dug through trash bins, and squeezed through open windows hunting for anything to eat. By the time anyone official showed up, the animals had already spread through several neighborhoods.

The escape happened at the Lopburi Municipality Animal Nursery in the Pho Kao Ton subdistrict, where the city keeps monkeys on behalf of Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. The good news for staff is that they managed to keep more than 1,000 other monkeys from following the escapees out. The bad news is that the roughly 100 who got out were more than enough to turn a normal Tuesday morning into total chaos, as officials scrambled to round them up.

They Actually Invaded a Police Station

Of all the places 100 monkeys could go, several of them picked the one building that is supposed to keep order. A group made it onto the grounds of the Tha Hin Police Station, where they climbed across desks, windows, and office equipment before slipping back out into the streets. Some rifled through cars parked at the station while officers tried to figure out how to respond to a crime scene where the suspects had tails.

According to witnesses, officers grabbed whatever was handy. Slingshots came out to herd the animals back toward the shelter, and firecrackers were set off to scare them along. Around 15 houses in the area were damaged as the monkeys tore through gardens and pried into anything that might hold food. The raid on the police station became the detail everyone kept repeating, mostly because it is hard to top.

Corn, Lotus Seeds, and Cartons of Milk

You cannot just walk up and grab a wild macaque, so officials went with a two-part plan. For the bigger, more dominant monkeys, tranquilizer darts became the main tool. Those are the ones that fight back and refuse to be led anywhere, so crews had to knock them out before they could be carried home.

For everyone else, the trick was patience and snacks. Teams set up cage traps at spots all over the affected neighborhoods and baited them with corn, lotus seeds, and cartons of milk. Officials said that combo worked because it let the monkeys wander in on their own instead of being chased and cornered. A frightened monkey is a fast monkey. A hungry, curious one is a lot easier to lure into a cage with a free meal.

The numbers got a little strange by the time the dust settled. Over about two days, officers recaptured more than 130 monkeys, which is more than the number that reportedly escaped. That likely means some free-roaming macaques from around town got swept up too, which is not the worst outcome in a city famous for having monkeys underfoot.

Why Would 100 Monkeys Bail at Once

Mayor Chamroen Salacheep floated a few possible reasons, and none of them are that surprising once you think about it. He pointed to hunger, the extreme heat, overcrowding inside the enclosure, and the plain old instinct these animals have to roam. Pack that many monkeys into one space in the heat, add the drive to look for food, and a weak spot in the fence is all it takes.

That is basically what happened. Officials said a single weak point in the enclosure let a large troop push through, and once one figured it out, the rest followed. The structural weakness is now the focus of an investigation into whether the monkeys found the gap themselves or whether someone helped things along. Either way, the mayor apologized to residents and asked anyone with property damage to report it so the city could take a look and figure out what help it could offer.

Welcome to Monkey City

If you are wondering why a city has a shelter holding more than 1,000 monkeys in the first place, you have to know Lopburi. This place is genuinely nicknamed Monkey City. It is home to a large population of long-tailed macaques that have roamed freely for years, hanging around temples, storefronts, and traffic like they own the place. To locals and tourists, the monkeys are both a mascot and a headache.

The city even throws an annual Monkey Buffet festival, an event where huge spreads of fruit and vegetables are laid out for the animals. It draws visitors from around the world and has helped make Lopburi internationally famous. The flip side is that the same monkeys have caused real problems, from property damage to aggressive run-ins with people trying to protect their food and stores.

How the Monkeys Ended Up in the Shelter

The shelter itself exists because of an earlier crisis. When tourism collapsed during the pandemic, the free food dried up and the monkey population turned bolder and more desperate in its search for meals. Things got bad enough that in 2024, wildlife officials ordered a big campaign to capture the animals and get them off the streets. Roughly 2,500 macaques were rounded up and placed into enclosures after a string of violent, food-driven incidents.

So this escape is not just a funny story about monkeys in a police station. It is a crack in a containment effort that took years to pull off. Every animal that gets loose is a step back toward the chaos the city spent all that time and money trying to end. That is why officials treated a hundred escapees like an all-hands emergency instead of a minor animal control call.

This Has Happened Before

Here is the part that stings for Lopburi. This was not a first. More than 100 monkeys broke out of the same shelter back in September 2025, and the pattern was almost identical. They roamed nearby communities, climbed into homes and vehicles, and even made their way into a police station. Same facility, same neighborhoods, same troublesome ending. If it feels like deja vu, that is because it is.

A repeat like this raises an obvious question about whether the enclosure was ever built strong enough for the animals it was meant to hold. Dominant macaques are smart, strong, and stubborn. If they test the fence long enough and find one soft spot, they will use it, and the rest of the troop will pour out right behind them.

What Lopburi Is Doing Now

Crews repaired and reinforced the damaged section of the enclosure the same morning the escape was reported. Governor Weeraphong Ritrod said that patch job is only the short-term fix. The bigger plan is to build a more secure double-layer enclosure specifically designed to keep the dominant monkeys from breaking out again. The idea is that even if they beat the first barrier, a second one stops them cold.

The province is also setting up a foundation to help cover the cost of feeding the monkeys and improving their overall care, which circles back to one of the suspected reasons they left in the first place. If hunger and overcrowding pushed them out, better food and better conditions might keep more of them from wanting to leave. Officials made the welfare improvements part of the long-term plan, not an afterthought.

What Residents Are Being Told

For now, the city is still checking the surrounding communities in case any monkeys are hiding out. People have been asked to report sightings right away, and the Department of National Parks handed out contact numbers for the local wildlife officers running the operation. Residents are also being told to secure their homes and vehicles and, above all, to stop feeding the free-roaming macaques.

That last one matters more than it sounds. Feeding the monkeys is exactly what taught them to see people as walking snack machines, and it is a big reason the population grew so bold in the first place. A monkey that expects free food from a human is a monkey that will climb into your car window to get it. Lopburi has spent years trying to break that habit on both ends, and this escape is a reminder of how quickly the whole thing can slide backward. For a city that turned its monkeys into a tourist draw, keeping them behind a fence has turned into the hardest part of the job. And judging by the count that came back higher than the number that got out, they are still catching up.