Staff at a zoo in the Netherlands say they are baffled by their baboons, who have spent days sitting still, huddled together in fear and hardly eating.
The behaviour started on Monday evening, and only now are the 112 baboons becoming their normal, active selves again, said a biologist at Emmen Zoo.
The zoo still has no idea what spooked the hamadryas baboons, but it is a good sign that some are now eating apples, biologist Wijbren Landman said.
The zoo last saw such hysteria in 2007.
"What frightened them? We don't know, it's a mystery. There have been many suggestions - an earthquake, escaped snakes, aliens, thunder," Mr Landman told BBC News.
“They were immediately sitting in the trees and on the rocks doing nothing at all”, siad Wijbren Landman,Biologist.
"The other animals here are OK - they have lemurs, elephants and kangaroos as neighbours, and they show no sign of panic."
Emmen lies in the north-eastern Netherlands, near the German border.
Mr Landman said he had consulted a French baboon expert who had witnessed such baboon hysteria in the wild, triggered by awareness of a predator. But the French expert said such hysteria had not lasted as long as in the Emmen case.
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