It's great to see the chimpanzees fight back, as the apes hurling abuse at them from the outside should be made to switch positions with the inmates for a day or two. It's crazy that visitors were tossing pieces of bricks at such intelligent animals.
If anything needs educating a.s.a.p. in Indian zoos it is the abusive behaviour and maltreatment on zoo animals by some of the general public ... Well, they have so many priorities right now to move on - improving zoo standards and provisioning for adequate staffing levels, renovating sub-standard zoos, establishing realistic conservation breeding programmes, initiating keeper and technical/scientific staff training and most importantly securing adequate funding and visitor gate fees for zoo operation - on that perhaps this is considered the lesser evil. Education is a relatively new aspect in Indian zoos. Signage as some of you will testify who have visitted is next to ...! If those 5 items I mentioned are met Indian zoos can really meet their full potential!
without wanting to sound racist, its the same in zoos throughout Asia. I've often seen visitors spitting at animals in disgust while at zoos in Malaysia. Why visit a zoo if you only think of animals with contempt??!? Maybe its a dominance thing, or maybe just a general belief that animals are nothing more than objects. Anyway, here's a photo I took of a warning sign at Zoo Negara in Kuala Lumpur: http://www.zoochat.com/654/zoo-negara-sign-kl-46873/
That's terrible that people were doing that. And here in the UK we complain when people tap glass... Good on the chimp though, however I find the picture of him in the water odd...
