{"id":718829,"date":"2026-06-22T08:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/718829\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T08:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:18:09","slug":"missing-vervet-monkey-spotted-in-ft-lauderdale-neighborhood-may-belong-to-dania-beach-sanctuary-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/718829\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing vervet monkey spotted in Ft. Lauderdale neighborhood may belong to Dania Beach sanctuary, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

A six-year-old girl got the surprise of a lifetime when a monkey wandered into her backyard and accepted a banana from her hand.<\/p>\n

With her mother capturing the encounter on camera, Myah recently came face-to-face with the unexpected visitor in her Riverside Park neighborhood.<\/p>\n

“It was amazing \u2014 the craziest thing ever,” the smiling first-grader told CBS News Miami.<\/p>\n

The curious primate has become the talk of the neighborhood, climbing trees, scampering along seawalls and feasting on mangoes as residents try to figure out where it came from.<\/p>\n

Wildlife experts believe they may already know the answer.<\/p>\n

“We think maybe someone trapped her, could not take care of her and then let her go,” said Dr. Missy Williams, director and founder of the Dania Beach Monkey Sanctuary.<\/p>\n

Williams believes the monkey may be Maddie, a female African vervet monkey<\/a> that recently disappeared from the sanctuary’s colony.<\/p>\n

“Maddie is about 7 or 8, an adult female. She left the Dania Beach population, so it’s a mystery why she left,” Williams said.<\/p>\n

The sanctuary, located near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, cares for a colony of African vervet monkeys descended from animals linked to a roadside zoo and research facility that operated decades ago.<\/p>\n

According to Williams, Maddie was first spotted near the Fort Lauderdale Beach Marriott, then at a cemetery in Rio Vista before making her way into central Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Now, sanctuary staff are hoping to safely reunite Maddie with her family.<\/p>\n

If residents spot the monkey, experts urge them not to try to capture her. Instead, they should contact the Dania Beach Monkey Sanctuary at Daniabeachvervetproject@gmail.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For now, Myah is enjoying the memory of her unusual visitor \u2014 a wild encounter she says she will never forget.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A six-year-old girl got the surprise of a lifetime when a monkey wandered into her backyard and accepted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[234134,216074,79,4165,201],"class_list":["post-718829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-dania-beach","tag-ft-lauderdale","tag-science","tag-south-florida","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}