Dangerous enclosures...

Leptonyx said:
Thankfully- the alpacas are pretty antisocial :) We got a new one over the summer, but he's only been at the front within arms reach two or three times. I have no idea how severe the pig bite was...I just saw the barriers being set up after it had happened.

I guess the only question is whether we're talking about "dangerous" exhibits or "idiot proof" exhibits...if we went with the latter this thread could probably go on infinitely :rolleyes: I for one want to know how someone managed to get to the polar bears...
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If you think about,these people are just getting payed to be stupid
 
You should see the cassowary exhibit at the little zoo in
Ortenburg-Irgenöd (Bavaria)...Too bad I didn't make a photo of it; the wire mesh fence seperating visitors and birds is about 4-5 feet high.
 
That's what I remember of the one at Avifauna--it was the same type of fence my mother had around her back yard which only contained the small dogs she had. When she got a basset hound he climbed the fence with ease.
 
redpanda said:
There was an escape a few days after ben bought the zoo, but that was because of a keeper's blunder rather than the barriers (a shutter wasn't locked). I believe sovereign, the male jag, ended up in an enclosure with the tigers and had to be lured into their house before being sedated and moved back to his own enclosure.
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That's what the book said. Ben also mentioned a wolf escape somewhere in there.
 
Dangerous Enclosures

Continuing this thread, I would just say that all British Zoos are subject to inspection and licensing and although accidents do happen, I think we have the safety of enclosures pretty much under control.
 
Sun Wukong said:
You should see the cassowary exhibit at the little zoo in
Ortenburg-Irgenöd (Bavaria)...Too bad I didn't make a photo of it; the wire mesh fence seperating visitors and birds is about 4-5 feet high.
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Paignton zoo is the same, and although there is a small slope leading up to the fence, it's still pretty low and very thin gauge mesh.
 
The only enclosure that has really scared me was the polar bear enclosure at Vincennes in Paris back in the early '70s. There were a couple of men employed to stop you from getting too close to the wall. I never understood how they could stop the bears from getting too close to the wall from the other side - it certainly didn't look high enough to stop a determined bear. Does anyone else remember it?

Alan
 
exhibit for arctic wolves in ZOO Brno, Czech republic, is very nice home for its inhabitants, but it also provides fantastic contact between people and wolves. But it is really very very easy to fall to the exhibit, as the wall made of false rock is very low :D it happened to me few times, that I almost fell there XD and because arctic wolves have cubs, I think they would kill me quickly to protect them.
 
Seems more likely, zoo keepers often enter wolf enclosures and the wolves seem to avoid them.
 
I would nominate the Crested Porcupine enclosure at Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, near Bristol, as an accident waiting to happen. The ground within the enclosure rises up until the porcupines are at eye-height. However, the enclosure is only of chain-link fencing, with no safety rail, and I do worry that if a porcupine decides to back up against the fence, the quills could potentially put someone's eye out. My visit was a year or two ago and I suppose it is possible that improvements have been made since then. At the same zoo, there were no stand-off barriers in the small monkey house, and I'm not sure children (or adults, come to that) can be trusted not to put their fingers through the wiremesh. The switches and timer for the electrical appliances were in the public area of the monkey house, inviting public tampering.
 
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I actually nominate Noahs ark zoo farm as an accident waiting to happen ;)
 
And then elephants and bears or so they say... Goddamit, when will they shut the place down and send the animals to Bristol and NWCP when it opens!
 
The Jacksonville Zoo's old Nile Crocodile exhibit was a death trap waiting to happen.The exhibit was just a sectioned off finger of the river and they put the crocs in there. You took a bridge to get over it and if there was a good Nor'Easter, there could be a foot of water under the bridge. I remember one time maintenance didn't section it off for a hour and a lot of people crossed it. I'm amazed none of the Crocs ever tried to make an escape.
 
The bear exhibits at Cologne Zoo would be easy to acess from the visitors area, just climb up on the low wall and walk on it into one of the exhibits. Now that the Berlin Zoo will probably not let the woman in who decided to pay their polar bears a visit, maybe she can take the train down to Cologne and say hello to their grizzlies instead!
 
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