Mysterious mummy found on the ceiling of Minneapolis department store

This squirrel monkey mummy was found on the ceiling during the renovation of an old department store in Minneapolis. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, there is a mummy mystery: how did a dead monkey die on the ceiling of a department store? On April 8, the mystery was solved when a photo of the "mummy" monkey appeared on the Facebook page in Minneapolis. This photo was submitted by a man who claimed to be renovating the Dayton Department Store in downtown Minneapolis (an institution with a history of 100 years is being transformed into a shiny new commercial space).

This photo seems to show the long-term dead remains of a dry monkey. With the increase of age, it turned yellow and drew a horizontal wound on its abdomen. The photographer said that he found this "dead primate" while decorating the ceiling of the department store. [Gallery: Best Photo of Monkey Cup]

Where did this monkey come from? How did it become the ceiling of a department store? Who-or what-caused that nasty wound? Old Minneapolis readers are full of theories about Facebook.

Several readers collected advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s to promote pet shops that once lived in the upper floors of Dayton. Newspaper clippings promote "funny monkeys" (including squirrels and spider monkeys), as well as tropical fish and myna. Another reader recalled a former colleague who said that he had worked in Dayton for 50 years. Once, a monkey escaped into the ventilation duct on the seventh or eighth floor. He said that he was killed by the blades on the exhaust fan.

So far, only one family has claimed that this mysterious "murder case" is their credit. Reagan Murphy, the mayor of nearby Robinsdale, said it was probably his father.

"My father (Larry) stole a monkey from an exhibition in Dayton in the 1960s," Murphy wrote on Twitter.

Larry and his friends obviously played truant in high school. One afternoon, they came to the pet shop in the department store. It is alleged that these boys secretly took a monkey out of the building under a jacket and brought it back to Larry's house. When Larry's mother returned to a garbage house that smelled like a monkey, the children were ordered to take the prize back to Dayton. Here's the story.

"They went back to the store, put him on the escalator and left the store," Murphy told the Star. Maybe that's where the monkey entered the ceiling pipe.

Anyway, this is an explanation. According to the BBC, building officials are working with local museums to find out which stories are true and which are just monkey stories.

But at present, a mystery has been solved: the monkey depicted in the photo must be a squirrel monkey, American primatologist and director of biodiversity research at Mary Blair Museum of Natural History told Life Science in an email.

Squirrel monkeys mainly live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America, and they have long been victims of the black market pet trade. Squirrels are about 30 feet tall. Squirrels are small, easy to smuggle and can be sold cheaply. In an old Dayton newspaper clipping, the advertising price of these pets was $65,438 +08.88 each. Sales advertisements for these monkeys even appear on the back of comic books.

Primary primate is a non-profit reserve for abandoned pets and non-native animals. According to the organization, although importing primates as pets is prohibited, there is no federal law prohibiting the possession of primates. The non-profit organization was established in 1970s to help put abandoned squirrel monkeys as pets.

Originally published in the journal Life Science.