Oregon Public Broadcasting

Officials at OHSU's National Primate Center say that all nine monkeys who escaped Friday when a keeper left their cage unlocked have been found and captured.

Eight of the nine monkeys stayed on the Hillsboro campus, but one strayed to an area near an apartment complex nearby. The monkeys are not used for research.

Jim Newsman, an OHSU spokesman, says the research center wanted to make sure that the public was warned about their escape as a public health measure.

Jim Newman: "These animals have never been tested for disease so if somebody were able to corner a monkey which would be a very difficult thing to do a bite could result in a  disease being transmitted. So we wanted to be very, very safe and make sure people knew that this was going on."

Newman says the Japanese Macaque monkeys are breeding monkeys. 

They were given to OHSU  by the Japanese government about four decades ago, because the Japanese government was thinking of exterminating them, and OHSU has acted as a kind of refuge for them.