The Wild Monkeys Who Took Over Silver Springs

Sometime in the 1930s, a Silver Springs boat operator released a few monkeys onto a small island to liven up his jungle cruise. He did not realize that rhesus macaques are strong swimmers. They were off the island within minutes, and their descendants never left.

A Tarzan Dream Gone Loose

The operator, known as Colonel Tooey, ran a “Jungle Cruise” boat tour along the Silver River decades before Disney borrowed the name. He wanted his trips to feel like the Tarzan films shot at Silver Springs, so he brought in a small group of rhesus macaques and set them on an island. They promptly swam to the mainland. A second batch did the same. Florida had a wild monkey population it never planned for.

Hundreds Strong on the Silver River

The monkeys thrived in the subtropical forest and multiplied. By the 1980s they had spread across the land that is now the 5,000-acre Silver Springs State Park, and today wildlife managers estimate around 300 of them living in several troops along the river. Paddlers and glass-bottom boat passengers regularly spot them lounging in cypress branches or carrying babies along the bank. They are one of the few free-ranging monkey populations in the country.

See Them the Smart Way

The best way to see the monkeys is from the water, on a kayak, canoe, or one of the park’s famous glass-bottom boats out of Silver Springs State Park near Ocala. Keep your distance and never feed them. They are wild animals, and some carry herpes B, which can be dangerous to people, so a long lens beats a close approach every time. Watch quietly and you will likely catch a troop moving through the trees along the bank.

Official page: Silver Springs State Park