The perils of free-ranging lemurs » South Lakes Wild Animal Park

The perils of free-ranging lemurs
28-08-2008

The perils of free-ranging lemurs:

Girl attacked at zoo

28-08-2008

They will never learn. It will only take the threat of closing Gill down (not dissimilar to his problems in QLD) and pressure from the zoo community for South Lakes to change their tune.

28-08-2008

However according to the article, they took in food and were unaware that animals can bite (!)
Lemurs aren't normally aggressive, so I'm sure something happened to promote the Lemur biting her.

28-08-2008

I was there last week and quite a few children insist on going far to close to lemurs and trying to touch them despite the fact that there are signs saying do not touch the lemurs. When a child did get too close obviously all the lemurs in the nearby area made their warning noise at which I would have thought people would back away, but not these kids/parents. Some even ignored the signs saying do not bring food in and do not feed the lemurs, so I'm not really surprised that the little girl was bitten, of course it may have not been her fault at all and just an unfortunate event.

28-08-2008

Exactly. The way the zoo casually brushed off the incident surely means there's more to the story than meets the eye. After all, it must be the lemur's fault, not the parents', right?

28-08-2008

That and the zoo employs very experienced staff!!!!!!!!!!So its got to be the kids/parents fault.

28-08-2008

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. Lemur walk-throughs are so popular now. Most have a member of staff permanently on duty to warn people taking risks and to deter lemurs taking liberties (they spray them with water from a plant mister or something similar).
The best one I've seen is the Madagascar exhibit at Cotswold: they don't just ban food and drink, they ban push-chairs from the exhibit. The keeper told me it was because people always pack some food in the push-chair - and the lemurs learn that very quickly.

Alan

__________________
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

28-08-2008

Gentle Lemur- You could say this is a not-so Gentle Lemur, could you not?

28-08-2008

I'm wondering if this little accident will cause some zoos to revue their Lemur walkthough enclosures. Only an isolated incident, but one other zoos are probably very keen to avoid being repeated as I think this could have happened anywhere, not just at South Lakes.

28-08-2008

Impertinence from Pertinax!
(I should apologise, I made almost the same joke in a PM a few days ago).

Actually it's fortunate that it wasn't a gentle lemur that bit the little lass. Anything that eats bamboo needs big teeth and strong jaw muscles (and I've said that before too).

Alan

__________________
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

28-08-2008

Wellington Zoo has a mixed island exhibit for capuchins and spider monkeys

28-08-2008

South Lakes living dangerously again... the council issued them with a written warning over an incident in June in which a lemur escaped while maintenance work was being carried out on the perimeter fence....

30-08-2008

With the reported high turnover of staff and the poor reputation within the zoo community I doubt that South Lakes could really claim to have 'very experienced' staff.

30-08-2008

I knew it was one of them, but having never visited I was unsure where.

30-08-2008

I said it tongue in cheek as i spoke to 2 members of staff on my last visit in may and they only had 15 months experience of working in zoos between them,so you cannot realy blame the staff as thet don`t realy know much more than the visitors.As for its poor reputation well its got to improve some day but not sure when that will happen.