Posted on 05/15/2006 7:04:16 PM PDT by Charlespg
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands May 15, 2006 (AP)— 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.
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.
On the Net:
http://www.advergraphics.nl/beeksebergen/Beer vs Aap.pdf
Uh oh...you're not gonna make friends with Don-o or a few others whose names I don't care to remember!
Thats why we don't keep bears in our homes.
Does a bear eat in a zoo?
LOL! The term "bushmeat" refers to primates killed for food in Africa, and comes up frequently when people are looking for the source of an infection of Marburg or Ebola as a potential vector. I suppose I should explain that for the unwary. (I couldn't resist...)
LOL!!!
catz
Dear catz,
Have you guys ever considered taking the car keys and going for a catz cruize?
He'd never know.
pax
>>"I think if I let a "sloth" bear catch me then I really deserve to be eaten..."
Yes, that is the moral of the primitive philosophy known as the theory of evolution. Give that monkey a Darwin award.<<
I said that before I saw the picture - its a lot more "bear" than "sloth." Now, I would want a big stick.
LOL!! If it survived, it was only because I wasn't hungry enough that day!!
I'd far rather see a bear eating a monkey, than what I witnessed at the zoo with my young daughter... a VERY HAPPY male giraffe (blue, and twisted like a corkscrew), about to get happy with a female giraffe... and "mommy! what is that thing and what are they doing???"
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