A zoo keeper spends much of his or her life dedicated to caring for rare and endangered species that may otherwise die off in the wild. It can be heart-wrenching for these animal lovers to witness the death of an old or sick friend. Sometimes these animals die as part of their natural life cycle, through no fault of the zoo — and often these animals lived much longer in captivity than they would have in the wild. They never had to run for their lives, compete for food or trek thousands of miles in search of water. You could say they “lived the good life.” However, in some areas, lack of funding, mismanagement or negligence led to the deaths of many animals at zoo parks, thus hurting the reputation of the whole lot.
Zoo parks sometimes fail due to mismanagement, as was the case with the National Zoo in Washington DC. Under zoo director Lucy Spelman’s care, two red pandas died after ingesting aluminum phosphide pellets that were intended to kill rats. An African lion died after being left alone all night following surgery. A bobcat was put down for an ingrown claw and a pack of zebras starved to death from hypothermia and starvation. Animal rights advocates were also clamoring to know what killed 23 other animals during a short time span, including a young pygmy hippo, a bear, two giraffes, a seal, an orangutan, a panda, a lion and a bobcat. No paperwork was filed for the euthanized black-footed ferrets, tree kangaroo or bobcat, nor was an official record filled out for the giraffe that died under anesthesia. “Because of incompetence in management and veterinary medicine, the operations at the National Zoo have been in such a state of disarray that it has led to poor animal care, animal suffering and even animal deaths,” wrote Donald K. Nichols, a senior zoo pathologist.
One of the zoo parks under fire this year is the Goiania Zoo in Brazil, where 69 animals have died of mysterious causes. The deceased animals include giraffes, hippos, jaguars, anteaters, European bison, turtles and caimans, officials say. They fear there may be an animal poisoner on the loose but they are still running toxicology reports and running through all the paperwork. Others argue that cramped enclosures and poor conditions may be a cause for death. One of the dead caimans was found with a fishing hook lodged in his stomach, which may point to recklessness. One Brazilian news site called the zoo “a torture show open to the public.” Zoo director Raphael Cupertino says, “We have seen a sequence of large animals die and we will take all the necessary steps to resolve the situation.”
The safety of zoo parks has also been called into question at times. While far more people leave zoos unscathed, there are still a number of zoo incidents that leave Americans wondering whether we should be so close to wild animals at all. For instance, a zoo keeper had his finger bitten off by an enraged chimp in 2009. A man was ravaged by a 300-pound Siberian tiger who escaped from his cage in 2007. A zoo official at Belgium’s Olmense Zoo was mauled to death by a cheetah in 2007. That same year, a six-year-old girl was killed by a performing tiger at the Kunming Zoo after a camera flash disturbed him. A pregnant zoo keeper was fatally mauled by a 180-pound leopard at the John Ball Zoo in Michigan. These incidents and more warn us that wild animals will always be dangerous; it is indeed nature over nurture.
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