Is a killer monkey invasion in Florida’s future?

Don’t be scared, but a deadly herpes-infested monkey could be rampaging around your backyard before long.

OK, that’s a bit alarmist. But rhesus macaques have long charmed visitors at Silver Springs State Park and worried health experts in Florida.

Now a new study says their population is about to explode, National Geographic reported.

And truth be known, the little monkeys aren’t really that charming. In fact, they can be downright dangerous.

“They aren’t as afraid of humans as other animals,” San Diego State anthropologist Eric Riley told National Geographic. “And they can be pretty nasty.”

The study in the journal Wildlife Management found the monkey population might double by 2022 unless state agencies do something about it.

The current population is about 300, so humans shouldn’t panic just yet. Of course, isn’t that what the humans said in “Planet of the Apes”? And we all know how that turned out.

The monkeys really have no business being here in the first place. Florida is not native to the critters, but the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reports that three species have been introduced to the state over the years.

There are squirrel monkeys, vervet monkeys and the rhesus macaques. The squirrel version showed up between 1940 and 1970, but the population is dwindling.

The vervets escaped from a research lab in the 1950s and mainly hole up around Dania Beach.

It’s the rhesus macaques that are the worry. Six of them were let loose on an island in Silver Springs in 1938 by a tour-boat operator who envisioned making a Tarzan-like theme park, National Geographic reported.

Much to his surprise, the little monkeys could swim. They quickly left the island and made themselves at home in the Ocala National Forest.

As the monkey population grew, so did the encounters with humans. The FWC had 23 reports of primate-inflicted human injuries between 1977 and 1984, according to National Geographic.

It stopped keeping records after that, but there have been plenty of reported incidents like the 2016 one in this video.

Such encounters went from being a nuisance to a healthy concern earlier this year when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that up to 30 percent of the monkeys carry herpes B.

Only 50 cases of that virus ever have been found in humans, National Geographic said, but it is usually deadly when contracted.

It causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord that leads to brain damage or death. In 1997, a research assistant died after accidentally getting bodily fluids from a macaque in her eye.

The odds of catching it from a wild macaque are “really, really low, but the consequence is really, really high — sort of like the lottery,” Steve Johnson, associate professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida, told National Geographic.

The monkeys have been known to throw feces at humans, but a lot of us are still charmed by them. That affection is part of the problem state agencies face in dealing with the growing population.

There have been sterilization efforts, but that program ended in 2012 due to a public outcry. It turned out trappers had delivered more than 1,000 monkeys to biomedical research firms, according to news reports.

In February, the FWC announced a feeding ban on monkeys and other animals such as pelicans, raccoons and bears. It also called for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to come up with a population-management plan.

“Without management action, the presence and continued expansion of non-native rhesus macaques in Florida can result in serious human health and safety risks, including human injury and transmission of disease,” Thomas Eason, assistant executive director of the commission, said in a statement.

And that was before the wildlife management study came out. Now there could be more pressure to get something done.

Fear not, the monkeys aren’t a threat to take over the planet. But they could sure make life a little scarier for humans in Florida.

Read the National Geographic story here.

David Whitley is a member of our Community Conversations Team. He can be reached at [email protected]