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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has cited Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for violating the Animal Welfare Act after a monkey escaped from a university research laboratory.

Wake Forest Baptist is appealing the findings, the medical center told the Winston-Salem Journal Wednesday.

The citation was for failing to house the monkey safely and securely, but it wasn’t clear what punishment, if any, the medical center faces.

An inspection report noted the latch of the monkey’s cage was “easily manipulated to open.” Staff at the primate center have since installed a chain with a secure latch to the center’s outside corridors to prevent further escapes, the report said.

Under the federal law, failure to correct problems documented by inspectors can result in fines and confiscation of animals.

The 8-pound female macaque — used to breed other monkeys for research purposes — got out of her cage at the Wake Forest Primate Center on June 29. She opened a latch on her cage, then managed to open a chain-link fence and get out of the center, officials said.

She roamed the woods for 11 days before she was captured.

The federal action is the result of a complaint filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“We had hoped that WFU would honor the monkey’s indomitable spirit by sending her to an accredited sanctuary after she was recaptured, but the university has not given any indication that it is pursuing this compassionate option,” said a PETA spokesman.

(Photo by Crystal Hughes, via Fox 8) 

Humans had been searching more than 10 days for the monkey that escaped from Wake Forest University’s Primate Center, but it was a dog who finally spotted her.

Cassidy Garwood, 14, told WGHP/Fox 8 that her dog, Keeley, saw the monkey Tuesday afternoon in some trees outside their house on Frye Bridge Road.

When the family went to see what Keeley was barking at, they saw the 8-pound, one-foot-tall macaque jumping from tree to tree.

The family called authorities and officials from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, Lexington Police and Wake Forest soon arrived on the Garwoods’ property, where the monkey was brought down with three tranquilizing darts and returned to the research facility.

Richard Young, who heads the animal resources program for Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, told the Winston-Salem Journal that the monkey is doing fine and will be quarantined for six weeks.

After that, he added (in a word choice he probably regrets) she’ll be placed “back with her other cage mates, inmates, back in her family.”

The monkey outsmarted two barriers at the center on June 29 and fled into the woods, prompting a search in which law enforcement, university officials and animal control officers set traps with apples and bananas and even used recordings of a baby monkey in their efforts to capture her.

The 16-year-old macaque is a breeder, producing offspring that are used for medical testing. She came to the primate center in 2008 after being captured in Indonesia.

According to the website for Wake Forest’s Primate Center, staff “use nonhuman primates to study six of the 10 major causes of death in the United States.”

The monkey’s escape led to criticism from some animal welfare groups, including PETA, which filed a formal complaint July 4 with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The group urged the agency to investigate Wake Forest for possible violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including failure to ensure that the primate housing is safe and secure.

Young said that Wake Forest has beefed up security at the primate center.

After eluding authorities for 11 days, the laboratory monkey who escaped from a Wake Forest University research facility has been captured and returned to the school’s Primate Center.

The one-foot tall, 8-pound macaque was caught this afternoon near Frye Bridge Road in Davidson County after being shot with three tranquilizer darts. three shots from on Tuesday afternoon.

Forsyth County Animal Control responded to the neighborhood after a teenaged girl spotted the monkey in a tree in her family’s yard, Fox News reported.

The 16-year-old monkey is kept at the center as a breeder, producing more monkeys that are used for medical testing.

(Photo: By Cassidy Garwood, via Fox News)

It’s far cuter than the  dog-riding monkey, but we’re not suggesting they become a halftime show.

A dog in remote north-eastern Bangladesh has become a minor celebrity by breastfeeding a baby monkey back to health.

The monkey, just a few days old, was rescued from angry villagers, who had seized it after a group of monkeys damaged a rice field, the dog’s owner told AFP today.

The news agency reports that scores of people have flocked to Shipar Reza’s house in Bishwanathpur village to witness the addition to the litter of his dog Mintu, who is also mother to seven puppies.

The day after the baby monkey was rescued by from an angry mob, it  joined the other puppies as they fed off  Mintu. Since then, it has also started sleeping with Mintu and other puppies.

(Photo: AFP)

Rascal

Squiggy

Spam-o-rama

Monkey

Who’s the ugliest of them all? 

We won’t know that until after June 24 when a panel of judges at the Sonoma-Marin Fair will select the World’s Ugliest Dog from the 21 pooches vying for the honor. 

Until then, we can vote. Our votes don’t count. But we can vote. 

Icky

In online voting, the top two contenders so far are Icky, who won the online voting last year, and Cuda. 

Icky was rescued from an animal hoarder, and won three ugliest dog contests before the age of one. 

In doing so, he helped raise more than $1,600 for Sacramento charities. Icky co-stars in the film “Worst In Show,” which is about the ugly dog contest circuit. 

Cuda, from Durham, N.C.,  is described by her owner as a pit bull-gargoyle mix. She was born deformed, with a curved spine and front legs of two different lengths

Cuda

Her shoulders jut forward, her neck has limited movement and her tail   “doesn’t even look like it’s attached correctly.” On top of all that, she has a severe underbite and snorts like a pig. 

“She is the kindest and gentlest dog ever and has been given a clean bill of health by the vet. She is not in pain,” her owner says. “…I want her to have the opportunity to show the world that even deformed dogs are beautiful.” 

You can see all the contenders and vote here.

“Dog House” isn’t a book about a dog; it’s a book about a lifetime of them — about the love we seek, the missteps we take and, at last, making that perfect, or almost perfect, canine connection.

Carol Prisant, though she grew up in a less than pet-friendly home, was pretty sure she was a dog lover, but it took awhile for her to get it right.

With humans, on the other hand, she appears to have succeeded the first time, and her 42-year marriage to husband Millard is the other ongoing theme of her often hilarious, often poignant, but never syrupy memoir.

While the book is about love and loss and dogs — all subjects prone to sappy treatment — Prisant’s sense of humor, honesty and willingness to admit she may not have always been the perfect pet owner make for some fun and refreshing reading.

Prisant, when it comes to the pets in her life, starts at the beginning — with the goldfish that her pet-challenged mother flushed down the toilet, a stinky dime store turtle she subsequently released into the wild, a bird whose toes fell off after she brought it home from Woolworth’s and a monkey that fell in love with her husband’s leg.

Eventually she and her husband work their way up to dogs, including Cosi, a Jack Russell terrier, Fluffy, a purebred collie, and Blue and Billy and Emma and Jimmy Cagney and Juno — to name a few.

All of them had their idiosyncrasies. Some, she admits, were more than they could handle. Some moved on to new homes, and new ones would arrive — up to and after the death of her husband.

“Dog House” is more than a book about dogs, though. It’s about the love of a mother for her son, and, most of all, a wife for her husband.

Prisant is the American editor of the Condé Nast publication The World of Interiors, and author of “Good, Better, Best,” ”Antiques Roadshow Primer,” and “Antiques Roadshow Collectibles.”

(For more news and reviews of dog books, visit our “Good Dog Reads” page.)

An orphan monkey at a Chinese Zoo was being bullied by bigger primates, so zookeepers gave the little fellow his own personal guard dog.

Keepers at Jiaozuo City Zoo said the monkey was always being picked on, and that they had intervened to save his life several times.

“So we put a dog in the monkey cage, hoping he can protect the orphan,” a zoo spokesman told the China News Network.

The zoo said the dog, Sai Hu, does his job well.

“Whenever the baby monkey gets bullied, he dashes up and drives the others away. And the baby monkey is also very smart. Each time he smells danger he runs to jump on the dog’s back and holds on tight.

“The alpha male monkey has been really unhappy since we sent in Sai Hu. He tried to organize several ambushes on the little monkey, but they all failed because of the dog,” added the spokesman.