A video recently shared on Instagram captures a rather unusual scene – for Florida, at least. In it, someone taking a restful boat ride down Silver Springs suddenly gets rained upon by small projectiles. It’s not rain. It’s not even hail, oh no. It’s raining monkeys. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

In case you’re thinking “but wait, monkeys aren’t native to Florida?” Congratulations! Gold star. The thing is, species not being native has never really stopped them.

The story of how and why it became possible for monkeys to rain down on Silver Springs takes us back to the 1930s. Around this time, a chap named Colonel Tooey was running glass-bottomed jungle cruise boats along Silver Springs, giving visitors a wild ride.

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