TEN former laboratory monkeys flew into Southampton Airport on Thursday night on their way to a new life at Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre in Dorset.

The nine female and one male stump-tailed macaques are going into retirement at the leafy sanctuary near Wool after spending the last decade at a lab in Edinburgh.

They were each transported in separate boxes so they could make the journey from the Scottish capital to the south coast in comfort.

The south Asian monkeys were accompanied by Monkey World director and primatologist Dr Alison Cronin, who said: “We are so pleased to get Wilmot and his nine ladies a more natural life in their remaining years. Relocation can be a stressful time for anyone, so I was really happy that Flybe offered to help.”

The newcomers will be joining 230 rescued and endangered primates from all over the world at Monkey World, which already has eight stump-tailed macaques rescued from a British laboratory.

The 65-acre park, founded in 1987 by the late Jim Cronin, is also home to the largest group of chimpanzees outside Africa, as well as gibbons, orang-utans and several species of monkeys and prosimians.

Over the years it has built up a worldwide reputation for working with governments to clamp down on the illegal trade and exploitation of wild chimpanzees and other primates, including some endangered species.

Monkey World helped the Spanish government stamp out the use of chimps for tourist photographs. Other successes include saving 88 capuchin monkeys from a laboratory in Chile in 2008.