Bears eat monkey in front of zoo visitors (AP) Updated: 2006-05-16 08:46
Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors,
witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident Sunday at the Beekse Bergen
Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric
fence, where it was stunned.
A Sloth
bear eats a Barbary macaque monkey at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park in
Hilvarenbeek, south Netherlands on Sunday, May 14, 2006. Bears killed and
ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors, the zoo said
Monday. [AP Photo] | It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and
mauled it to death.
The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: "In an area where
Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a
long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on
Sunday."
"Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way
that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild
animals," it said.
Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident, including
photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear tried unsuccessfully to
shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on the structure, built of crossing
horizontal and vertical poles.
Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed onto a
horizontal pole, and, standing stretched on two legs, "used its sharp canines to
pull the macaque, which was shrieking and resisting, from its perch."
The bear then brought the animal to a concrete den, where three bears ate it.
The zoo said it "usually wasn't possible" for keepers to intervene when an
animal killed another.
The park plans now to move the Barbary macaques - which are large
monkeys but often inaccurately called "Barbary Apes" - to another part of
the park, it said.
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