This may be old news, but i don't think it was reported here on zoobeat. Annie a one year old orang utan was killed by her father A string of unfortunate circumstances resulted in a tragic accident at the orang utans on the 8.2.08. The little orang utan girl "Annie" (1 year) had climbed on top of the tight horizontal net of the enclosure. As Annie tried to get back to her mother "Matra" (31 years) she did not find the way back. Unfortunately her father "Bruno" (39 years) came to her "rescue" by pulling her down through the mesh. Our animal keepers had unsuccessfully tried to stop him by hosing him down with water until our veterinarian Mrs. Dr. Kempter anesthetised him with a blow pipe. Unfortunately it was already too late. By "helping" his daughter "Bruno" broke her neck. We did not comment the accident on the day of the accident since we wanted to find out exactly what happened first. Today we had a meeting at the location with technical expert. When we measured the net, we found the demanded width of 10 cm had not been kept at the spot next to the hydraulic jack of the middle separation. This resulted in a small inconspicuous gap of 16 cm length that enabled "Annie" to climb on the top of the net. This hole has now been secured without inhibiting the mobility of the separation. We at Hellabrunn are strongly affected by the futile death of "Annie", in particular because she proved with her climbing abilities as a one year old how important it is especially for juveniles to use the three dimensional space. This is not possible without the functional net structure. Since 1969 23 orang utans were born in Hellabrunn and we are sure that this living tradition will continue despite this sad death.
Very similar incident as to what happened, but with happier outcome, in Jersey's gorilla house some years back when the young male 'Motaba' got his head stuck through the ceiling bars. In that case the mother was so panicked she was in danger of pulling him back through and killing him- but father Jambo stepped in and rescued him by SLIDING him along to a place where the bars were fractionally wider and he could get his head safely back in. (As described in 'JAmbo the Gorilla' book)
