A baboon scheduled to undergo a vasectomy in Australia made a dash for freedom Tuesday along with his "two wives", leaving the trio running amok on the streets of the country's biggest city.

Animal wranglers and police were called after the trio escaped from a truck en route to a Sydney hospital in the evening rush hour as bemused locals looked on in a western suburb.

The state's health minister Brad Hazzard told local media one of the primates had been about to get the snip and the other two were there to "keep him calm".

"The two girls came as, effectively, his wives to keep him company while he had his vasectomy," Hazzard told The Daily Telegraph.

Videos on social media showed the three wandering past parked cars as passers-by watched in disbelief. "I’m six floors up and I was just having a gaze out at the car park... and there were three baboons," one caller to local radio station 2GB said. "I’m dead set serious. They even had shiny red bottoms."

A spokeswoman for New South Wales Police advised people to avoid the area but said there had been no immediate danger to the public. The runaways were eventually recaptured.