Wild animals sneaking into zoos, zoo animals coming back to their exhibits

[Jurek7]

This thread is about wild and zoo animals which voluntarily enter, stay or return to their exhibits. To show by examples, that animals do not understand nor desire 'freedom', but are strong materialists, going whenever there is food and safety.

A striking example is from Stuttgart zoo, because it concerns a buzzard. A bird which soars much further than any zoo aviary allows, which made a considerable effort to squeeze through bars of a zoo aviary, and tolerates people rather too close than their species usually does:

For around half a year a wild common buzzard (Buteo buteo) has been living in the vulture aviary,. Multiple attempts were made to capture and release the bird, but it always came back...

Source:
Instagram of Zoo Wilhelma (16/12/2022)

 

[Lafone]

In the recent Taronga zoo lion escape while one lion (the adult female) remained behind the majority returned on their own with one cub being tranquillised and the adult male being tempted back by the keepers. Given most of the escapees were cubs they would do things more as a group of course. Lions being fairly lazy the path of least resistance towards food was probably a driver.

Roar footage: Taronga zoo releases video of lions escaping from their Sydney enclosure | Sydney | The Guardian

I don’t think it’s that useful to the debate on zoos to suggest animals don’t desire ‘freedom’ however, as it’s just buying into the anti zoo narrative that animals have the concept of ‘freedom’ in the first place. Freedom is a human concept. Well treated and well fed animals is a basic goal for all zoos - secure enclosures are mandatory for the animals safety as well as for the people visiting them. The reason there is so much reporting when an animal escapes is not really due to the danger but because people anthropomorphise the concept / idea of being enclosed.

And as a pro zoo person I also have a personal view of what is ‘sufficient’ for an animal in terms of being enclosed of course. I think it is downright cruel to keep a lab macaque confined for life in a 2 foot wire cage, for example, but I’d happily visit a great macaque exhibit that has large indoor and outdoor areas for the animals to enjoy. Both are however ‘confined’, if you take that view and neither have a ‘choice’.

 

[nedpepper]

A wild Polecat got into the Polecat exhibit at British Wildlife Centre recently and had to be removed and released.