This is sad, aggravating, and horrible all rolled into one. A zoo in Shenzhen has seen about a dozen of its crocodiles die — correction: killed — at the hands of visitors.
Reports The Nanfang:
Only two crocodiles are left alive of over a dozen that were placed in Rural Grand View Garden, a zoo in Shenzhen’s Guangming New Zone, Shenzhen Evening News reports. The cause of their death? Visitors throwing stones at them and polluting their habitat with garbage.
A journalist who visited the zoo this week reported that, as crocodiles hibernate during the winter, a lot of visitors have been shouting, spitting and throwing things at them to make sure they are alive.
Well… they were alive, you dipshits.
For whatever reason, news of animal abuse has been increasingly grabbing headlines recently — and we hope the reason isn’t because there’s simply been more incidents. (Indeed, as any zoo-goer here can tell you, misbehavior from patrons is the norm.) Maybe, just maybe, we’re in the midst of a conscious effort to highlight inhumane acts toward animals, and out of awareness we will see change, hopefully in the form of one stranger kindly reminding another, perhaps at a zoo, to respect fellow living things.
It’s probably wishful thinking on our part, but better than believing the alternative: that people are just dicks.
Visitors to Shenzhen zoo toss garbage, rocks, killing crocodiles (The Nanfang, h/t RFH)
Once all the crocs have died (it’ll happen), here’s an idea:
clear out all the animals from all of the pens in the zoo. Then, populate the zoo with somewhat lifelife animatronic robots that resemble real life animals. Whenever they are hit by a object from a zoo patron, their eyeballs light up and their head spins around and plays “La Cucaracha”.
As they say: WIN-WIN.
They almost got that scenario at the GZ zoo in the dinosaur trail. I never saw anyone lobbing yonnies at the biped beasts or throwing rocks/goobers/litter at the dinosaur models either but I was distracted, trying to keep all the shanzai fog off my camera.
Whats most noticeable about this story: the culture that says to Chinese its ok to abuse animals, and the Chinese tendency to do/say nothing when they witness something wrong happening. Plus the fact that this happened over time so when they zookeepers finally got around to cleaning the area and checking if the animals were still alive it was too late.
Their procedures for taking care of their animals must really suck.
That is just deplorable. Changsha just opened a brand new, fabulous zoo last year (I went 3 times I was so impressed with it). I’m interested to go back this spring and see if it has been kept up. But even last year, the worst thing about the zoo was the litter from the Chinese patrons. The staff just couldn’t keep up with it. It’s really terrible the way the people here have no respect for the environment or fellow living creatures.
I got an idea, take all the crocs and pandas and poor tigers out and populate the zoos with lao wai. The Chinese love to stare at us so much anyway might as well make money out of it. “Look mommy! Black!”
This is such a shame that they can’t even have a zoo without ruining it. But then again, if they can’t respect one another as humans, how are they to respect animals?
there’s actually nothing in the story that confirms how the crocodiles died. and no matter how bad the behavior is by visitors to the zoo, the real blame lies with the zoos. it’s their job to educate the public on how to treat the animals. it’s their job to protect the animals from harm. if the animals died as was reported, than this is blatant negligence on the part of the zookeepers. if nine crocs died, that wasn’t something that happened in a moment. if they died by being pelted by rocks and trash, or consuming the trash, then this is 100% the fault of the zoo.
and if a zoo doesn’t have the resources to protect the animals, then don’t keep the animals. it’s your job to care for the animals. that’s it.
you can blame chinese people and chinese culture all you want, but the fact is the fault lies almost exclusively with the zoos.