Yang Liwang, director of the zoo, pointed at the empty Monkey Mountain and told this reporter that many monkeys suffered diarrhoea after the week-long holidays following the National Day of October 1. The disease spread fast. Though the zoo gave the sick monkeys first-aid treatment, 14 died within a week, leaving only two of them alive. The result of autopsy showed that those monkeys were died of hemorrhagic enteritis, which was caused by eating unclean food from visitors.

“Those monkeys had lived in the zoo for 10 years. They had survived the disastrous flood, but couldn’t escape this man-made calamity,” Yang said.

Liuzhou Zoo, located in downtown Liuzhou, was established in 1957. It is always crowded with visitors during weekend and holidays. Very often, people fed the monkeys with foods such as moldy peanuts and rotted fruits. Even worse, some visitors cheated the monkeys by hiding chilli in jelly, so as to see the upset monkeys jump up and down.

Monkeys are not the only victims of visitors’vicious behaviors. Two ostriches died after the Labor Day holidays. Fifteen plastic bottles were found in their stomachs. Four camels and three sika beer died after eating too much plastic bags. The poor little seals, who had come to give a show, also died in the hands of Liuzhou zoo-goers -- their stomachs were scarred with cuts from toothpicks and nails.

According to the records of the zoo, 28 cases of animals dieing of visitors’ feeding have taken place since 1992. Last year there were 80 species of animals kept in the zoo, but the number has decreased to 62 this year.

Yang showed the reporter a crocodile and said, “It cost the zoo 80,000 yuan (US$9,600). It’s now in hibernation, but some people use sticks to stab it, just for finding out if it’s really alive. The staff had to moved the crocodile as far as possible from the crib and put its head towards the inside so that its eyes won’t get hurt.”

There are other incidents. For example, some people throw stones to lions who are taking a nap at noon to disturb them to move.

Following every weekend, the staff would pick out a large amount of garbage from the cribs. It might be the core of the problem that the zoo does not have the authority to charge a fine, and it is far from enough to rely on education only.

Liuzhou Zoo is not alone in this kind of sufferings. Similar cases have taken place in many of Chinese zoos. Now, there is the suggestion that insurances be established for animals in the zoo. But can the animals be safe with an insurance of this kind or that kind?

(china.org.cn translated by Wu Nanlan, November 22, 2002)