Leila the Orangutan Drowns in German Zoo
This is the face of tragedy. Another orangutan needlessly lost…
DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS. Period. ~ RZ
Staff at a Hamburg zoo say one of their orangutans died needlessly after a visitor broke park rules against feeding animals. The animal, they claim, drowned in pursuit of a bread roll that had been lobbed into her enclosure.
An orangutan drowned in a German zoo on Wednesday after she fell into a water basin while trying to fish out a bread roll a visitor had thrown into her enclosure.
Zookeepers at the Tierpark Hagenbeck in Hamburg rushed to Leila’s aid, but by the time they had pulled her out of the water she was dead.
Chief zookeeper Walter Wolters said a visitor was responsible for the drowning. “Leila wanted to get the roll, but instead fell into the water and drowned,” he told German news agency DPA.
Leila, who was 10 years old, had lived in the Hamburg zoo since birth. Wolters said all the zoo’s staff were very upset by Leila’s death. “We are especially devastated by her death, because orangutans are a very endangered species and Leila was a valuable breeding animal,” he told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.
The visitor who threw the roll has not yet been identified. The zoo forbids the feeding of animals and has signs up that expressly remind visitors of the ban. Staff are now considering whether to file charges with police.
Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,569266,00.html
July 31st, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Considering whether to file charges?!?!? What needs to be considered? I understand that this person didn’t intend to kill Leila, but they didn’t “accidentally” throw the roll into the enclosure. This person blatantly disregarded a rule that’s in place to protect the animals.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I have to agree. In my mind, there’s no need to consider filing charges. Do it!!
Nobody knows whether the person intended or didn’t intend to harm the orangutan. But the fact of the matter is that the person violated the zoo rules, and that violation resulted in the death of the orangutan.
Seriously, what part of DON’T do people not understand? You DON’T harass the animals. You DON’T tap or beat on their enclosures. And you DON’T feed them.
This beautiful creature died for no reason. I hope that whoever threw the bread into the enclosure is prosecuted to the fullest extent that the law will allow.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:54 am
They probably didn’t mean to harm the orangutan but they did break the rules. I would file charges for that reason.
It is sad to see things like this happen. People do not think when they get around animals. They go to the zoo and they want to see them eat, move around, and do things. They don’t realize that even in the wild most animals really do not move around all day long.
Sara
World Zoo Today
http://www.worldzootoday.com
August 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Sad Story!
File charges…
One question I also have is… Why is there water deep enough to drown an orangutan in their enclosure?
August 4th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
eye for an eye. Put the idiot in with an adult male orang, justice will be served….
August 13th, 2008 at 5:02 am
This was truely a tragic incident that cost an orangutan it’s life and could have been prevented. It’s a sad fact that today there are so many signs everywhere that people naturally tend not to see them or read them even when the signs are right in front of them. How many people see, let alone read all the road signs that are plastered almost on top of one another for mile after mile. I am in no way excusing the person responsible for this needless death of an orangutan. They should have seen and read the sign (and maybe they did) and obeyed the rules. In the same token the zoo has at least a bit of responsibility for this tragic death of an orangutan. They should know that there will always be some people who don’t see the signs and others who see the signs yet ignore them. With that in mind the zoo should have made the fences higher to prevent just such an incident as this! They should have anticipated that some fool would, sooner or later throw something over the fence to the orangutans and I would be surprised if this were the first time that someone threw food or other items over the fence. You can’t “idiot proof” everything because idiots are so ingenious but the zoo should have tried. I hope they will raise the height of that fence to try and prevent another incident such as this one.
In answer to a question by Mitch on Aug 1st: I’m guessing the reason for the deep water is to keep the orangutans away from the fence and the people on the other side of it. Without the deep water the orangutans could move much closer to the people and more food and objects would be thrown over the fence to the orangutans who would be just on the other side of it! Until just recently it was thought that orangutans can’t swim and therefore avoid deep water, however in the newly released book Thinkers of the Jungle the photographer for the book actually photographed a few orangutans swimming across a river in Borneo. Those swimming orangutans are however a rare exception and most orangutans can’t swim as this inicident proved. Chimps and gorillas are also thought not to be able to swim and deep channels of water are quite often used in zoos and rescue centers for the great apes to keep the apes in their proper enclose and have been quite effective for that purpose. The great apes, for the most part know to stay out of deep water and Leila would certainly have not entered the deep water had it not been for the roll thrown into the water by a spectator.
In closing I would encourage everyone who has any interest in orangutans to read the book Thinkers of the Jungle. Not only does it contain a wealth of knowledge, but the photos are sensational and the photos alone are worth the price of the book. I’ve read several books on orangutans and this book is, by far, the very best.
The death of Leila is tragic, but in Thinkers of the Jungle they expose an even far greater tragedy, one this is ongoing. They explain how so many large organizations such as the WWF and OFI to name just two, have and still are collecting huge amounts of money which they “claim” is to be used for orangutan preservation. In fact, the money is being used to pay high paid leaders of these organizations and to pad already huge bank accounts with little if any of the money going to saving so much as a single orangutan! The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) had a special drive to collect donations “just for saving orangutans” and the donations collected amounted to a great deal of money. Write to the WWF (as well as the other so-called orangutan preservation groups like OFI) and ask them for an accounting of the funds collected and how they are being used? Ask they if they haved saved even a single orangutan as of this date and see what you get for a response! The funds collected by those organizations could have had fantastic results for the orangutans if they had been donated to any of the BOS groups or the COP (center for orangutan protection) both of which are doing the jobs they claim to be doing and are the organizations where donations would do the most for orangutans! If you’re only going to buy one book on Orangutans and efforts to prevent their extinction Thinkers of the Jungle is the book to buy!