Sri Lanka struggled to restore its national power grid after a monkey triggered a blackout that disrupted the supply of electricity to the island’s 22 million people, reports Reuters. The island nation of Sri Lanka extended power cuts yet again “on Thursday as it scrambled to restore its national grid to full capacity after a monkey triggered a widespread blackout over the weekend that disrupted” the supply of electricity to the entire nation.
The monkey disrupted a grid station in a suburb of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. It touched the station’s transformer, cutting off the supply of electricity to the entire country of Sri Lanka. It is unclear if the monkey survived its brush with the transformer.
The February 9 disruption interfered with the supply of power from Sri Lanka’s only coal-fired power plant, forcing the plant to operate in safe mode. “All efforts are being made to restore the grid to full capacity but power cuts will be implemented to manage peak demand hours in the night,” said Sri Lanka’s energy ministry. On subsequent days, 90-minute power cuts were imposed to limit demand to cope with the reduced ability to supply electricity.
In other news, a monkey survived for two years on a genetically-engineered pig kidney transplant. And a treatment for alcoholism cuts drinking by 90% among the monkeys it was tested on.
The University of Mississippi investigated a student for making monkey noises. Romania recalled its ambassador to an African country for “calling Africans monkeys.”
