ZSL Whipsnade Zoo Animal Escapes.
- Thread starter Pertinax
- Start date
A binturong escaped from Melbourne zoo this morning. A passing motorist saw him cross the road and climb a tree - thought it was a panther or something and called the police. It was about 2 am and they caught it with the assistance of local animal controllers and by that stage one of the zoo vets had arrived.
LOL
I was there that day, Scared the **** out of us, was back in around 1988, unless the bugger got out again.Same year as the Baby chimpanzee was stolen from Dudley zoo, He was left alone in the ape house kitchen and a visitor broke in & took it, got him back a few days later.
Dudley zoo Wallabies, Heavy snow one year brought down trees and broke their fencing, lovely fun running around the hilly zoo rounding them up in 2 feet of snow.
Collared Peccaries, Escaped and shot.
Now Southport Zoo.
late 70's Male and Female chimp escape, make it to onto roads climbing over cars, walked them back to enclosure.
90's
Male and female chimp escape, Male walked back, female tranq'd in river caves of pleasure land.
Some months later, Same male and female chimp escape again, Male shot dead and female tranq'd
throught the 90's there were:
Birds too numberous to mention, ring tailed coati's, gibbons, tapir, mara, capybara, binturongs.
LOL
I remember seeing a photo of him in the paper- he was strutting about afterwards with a broken broom handle in his mouth.
That ape house was badly designed in so much as you can't see if the Gorillas have really gone outside or not...
Do you know what happened exactly to the female Gorilla 'Ruki? I heard she was sold to Gordon Mills but died when she was being drugged for the transport. Is that what happened?
keeper19er
Active Member
zoogiraffe
Well-Known Member
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keeper19er
Active Member
Never knew it was two Rhino, just goes to show that zoo enthusiasts (if you are one) know a damned sight more about what goes on than us keepers.
As for a tortoise (and that species are a fair size) I can just picture it with a spoon, or even sat in a clay pigeon device
keeper19er
Active Member
If you want to be the person to volunteer for that job then I'll see you get Knighted. do you realise just how close you would have to get. Rhino are really poor sighted. Their sense of smell and their hearing are damned good.
Bearing in mind the poor thing will be totally stressed at new smells and sounds. And from my experience if there is a building behind the animal, this confuses it even more as your voice tends to bounce off it.
Good Luck
nicholas
Well-Known Member
Even if they are free-ranging with visitors, all animals at Apenheul are kept in their own limited habitats.
The Calgary Zoo in Canada has a handful of black-and-white colobus monkeys in with their small family of gorillas. Twice there have been escapes of the monkeys, and only with hot wire are the animals now contained in the exhibit. In a beautiful hardcover book that I have from the zoo, the keepers still believe that the monkeys could escape anytime they want to, but don't simply because it is much safer to remain in the enclosure. There are food dishes, warmth and companionship inside the exhibit, and if the colobus were to get out then they would face a bewildering lack of food, an alien environment, and a couple of feet of snow. Ha ha. Why not simply stay put?
Found this article, a group of patas monkeys on the loose in Florida, the preserve mentioned belongs to the ceo of Lowry park zoo. Not much of an exhibit, who can blame them!
After daring escape, monkeys on the lam - News - MSNBC.com
After daring escape, monkeys on the lam - News - MSNBC.com
Most zoo animals can do that. Only enclosures of dangerous animals, like big cats, eles, rhinos and apes are meant to be truly unescapable.
Did you ever wonder why gazelles and deer leap 5 or 7 meters in nature films but stay behind 3-4 m zoo moats?
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Films of cheetah escape from Basel Zoo few weeks ago:
[ame=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8820169347490565094]gepard | cheetah | escape2[/ame]
[ame="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3007515207961208519&q=&hl=en"]gepard | cheetah | escape1[/ame]
and another film:
Gepard hüpft aus dem Gehege / Vermischtes / SF Tagesschau
BTW, last year I seen keepers chasing a Vervet across the same trees.
[ame=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8820169347490565094]gepard | cheetah | escape2[/ame]
[ame="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3007515207961208519&q=&hl=en"]gepard | cheetah | escape1[/ame]
and another film:
Gepard hüpft aus dem Gehege / Vermischtes / SF Tagesschau
BTW, last year I seen keepers chasing a Vervet across the same trees.
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@Jurek7: great videos, and it's surprising how relaxed the zoo visitors were. Also, you are definitely correct with your reference to gazelles and deer. I suppose that they become complacent in captivity and have little desire to escape.
And surprising how stupidly close they were getting to it lol
Great thread.Czech (mostly Prague) ones I know about:
Prague Zoo has the "without bars" image so as someone mentioned above only dangerous animals mustn't escape at all cost. There are free reanging animals like peacocks, even wild population of some animals within the area of the zoos (ducks are the most visible of them). Some reared youngster of kept species are free to leave (like storks). Aside from that I read in 90's some small specie of monkeys (sorry I can't remeber which one) escaped (probably the whole group) from !no bars" exibit. Unluckilly the zoo couldn't capture them before winter and they didn't make it to the next spring.
Barbary macaques (in mixed exhibit with barbary sheep) found out that some bars around their enclosure are not sufficient to keep them in... YouTube - Monkeys Escape from Prague Zoo ...that happened a few times, the most escaping one was sent to more traditional caged enclosure in other zoo (Bratislava I think). I noticed recently that one individual tried to do something simillar somewhere else in the same enclosure but it was too big to do it succesfully. Memories, memories
Once, a pig tailed macaque somehow entered komodo dragon exhibit in Indonesian Jungle pavilon YouTube - Monkey vs Komodo ... strange stuff.
During floods some escapes occured.
In big mammal pavilon, a female hippo swam into elephants outdoor exhibit and had to be shot once the water was as high as the fences. A male elephant had to be shot before he would had drowned (the other option was let him free). A rifle man had to spent a night on the top of the roof of the pavilon just in case before two other hippos were still inside (a young female drowned but her father survived).
From sea lion group (1.3 - few weeks old male was evacuated just in case before - the zoo got wrong information and couldn't evacuate in time) one female just swam around flooded zoo and was captured (keepers realized later she was pregnant), two other females swam away and was saved in distant cities along the river and Gaston, the male, made it to Germany and was captured somewhere near Dresden. Stressed, in poor condition, he died on the way back home. Others survived and a female sired by Gaston was borned months later (keepers weren't aware of it, they thought that even if the female was pregnant she would probably lost it).
During my last visit I noticed a brown lemur without a front leg in the walkthrough enclosure. I chatted with a keeper a little bit and apparently this individual oneday in the past escaped from its (now former) enclosure but escaped into bat eared foxes' exhibit and was severely injured, recovered but the leg couldn't be saved.
Not only escapes from zoo happened unluckilly - two hungry dogs escaped from a squat few kilometers away from zoo, digged into the zoo. Twice. Although the secuirity responded they killed some goats and sheeps from children zoo and wounded other. After the second attack the dogs were confiscated from their owner. They were evidently in bad state and hungry.
In Dvůr there was an electricity collapse once and a gorilla male nearly escaped because of that. During the danger Prague gorilla keeper who was working there by this time, saw a mother with a baby so he cathed the baby and run away from there. The mother started screaming (not knowing what's going on) thinking the keeper is trying to steal her baby
I don't remeber details I think the male gorilla just went back to the indoor part of his exhibit or something like that - simply nothing happened.theres a story that in 2008 at howletts 18 dholes escaped and 2 had to be shot dead but was a defasting discision with howletts.
Ajkwba
Well-Known Member
Birdland had a Pink Backed Pelican fly off about 5 years ago, a 2nd tried but crash landed in the penguins. The escapee was away for a week, and was featured on Midlands today. we were getting phone calls from as far away as Devon from people saying they had seen our Pelican, a big black bird 
. She actually stay within a 5 mile radius and flew back into the park after 8 days
we also lost a Snowy Owl after heavy snow and she was recaptured by a fisherman 14 days later, none the worse except for a mobbing from a Buzzard
. She actually stay within a 5 mile radius and flew back into the park after 8 dayswe also lost a Snowy Owl after heavy snow and she was recaptured by a fisherman 14 days later, none the worse except for a mobbing from a Buzzard