News / Society
It’s a hog eat hog world at Bristol Zoo
An adult pig has eaten critically-endangered piglets and killed their mother, otters have eaten a rare monkey, and a lorikeet is on the loose after escaping.
These are just some of the disturbing events at Bristol Zoo which have been revealed by a whistleblower.
In December last year, a rare male warty pig ate day-old critically-endangered piglets before attacking and killing their mother.
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More horror followed just two weeks later, when a rare tamarin monkey was eaten alive by otters.
The lion-headed golden tamarin escaped his enclosure and fell into the nearby pond where it got trapped in a drainage valve, and then attacked by the American otters.
Female Visayan warty pig Manilla only joined the zoo last July. She was joined by Elvis just two months later with high hopes from zoo keepers that the two would mate. The critically endangered species is so rare that their numbers are unknown.
Unbeknown to the zoo, however, Manilla was already pregnant. The undisclosed source told the Bristol Post: “On the day the female gave birth to piglets, the male immediately ate them all, and then also attacked the mother by eating her rear end.
“She was so badly injured she had to be put down. This meant the loss of a family of rare warty pigs that could have been avoided by keeping the male separate.”
Staff at Bristol Zoo were said to have been deeply distressed by the event.
A spokeswoman for the zoo said: “In November Manilla showed some subtle changes to her behaviour and keepers alerted our in-house vet team.
“She showed no physical signs of being pregnant and, as she had not been with a male between July and October, she was well outside the known birth window for this species.
“The birth of her litter and the subsequent incident with the male was, therefore, completely unforeseeable.”
Although Bristol Zoo have described the recent events and loss of the rare animals as an unforeseeable tragedy, these incidents are not isolated.
Eyebrows were once again raised last week, when three rainbow lorikeets escaped from their enclosure.
The whistleblower confirmed: “Three rainbow lorikeets escaped from their enclosure but only two were recovered. There is still one lorikeet loose somewhere in Bristol. If a breeding pair had escaped then Bristol may have been infested with birds.”
Picture: Andy Dean Photography/ Shutterstock
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