Here's an article on the story: Police called after Gorilla 'escapes' from London Zoo | London Evening Standard
Reports are now that it has been recaptured good news! I imagine this was Kumbuka? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/13/gorilla-reported-to-have-escaped-at-london-zoo
It was indeed, just heard from a contact of mine at the zoo. He was out for a couple of hours, but has been darted.
I suspect that the incident probably occurred in the offshow area . I think they often open the back dens just before closing time . Some of the media reporting does seem to be based on rather speculative twitter accounts.
Customers were likening the incident to a scene from Jurassic World. So they shouldn't say the animal escpaped, the zoo was merely experiencing an animal containment anomaly I'm glad Kumbuka was darted successfully and did not have to be shot. The gorilla family has seen more tragedy than the Kennedys over the years, but is finally in a good place with the recent births of two infants.
Just when you think London Zoo is finally on a roll, gorilla births, Tamandua birth, possible Aye Aye birth (?), crocs, more tiger cubs, then something else happens that just gives them really bad publicity, let alone could have been calamitous to the animal in question let alone the public!!!! Is it just bad luck or bad management? Or both?
There have been plenty of past similar incidents and they sometimes don't come to the public's attention either. The bad luck is the bad publicity really.
Phineas T Barnum is said to have said 'There is no such thing as bad publicity'. It's up to London Zoo's PR people to get the true story out and explain things clearly. I'm afraid that the Curator of Mammals didn't do awfully well on the 'Today' programme this morning - partly because the delay on the line made it sound as if he was speaking from the other side of the world, and partly because he didn't explain how it happened. I hope there will be lots of interviews in front of the gorilla enclosure giving full chapter and verse. Alan
Yes, as you say hopefully in front of the indoor area where KUMBUKA is supposed to have smashed through the plate glass window.
Agree with that. They presumably already know what happened and how, so they need to explain that to scotch the speculation. In the past they haven't always done too well in that respect- Whipsnade's Chimpanzee escape some years ago was never fully explained, at least to my knowledge, nor the terrible accident that befell a keeper with the Indian rhino.
I'm sure I'm not alone in knowing of similar events in other zoos that didn't occur during opening hours so didn't become public knowledge. If ZSL hadn't had to put their emergency procedures into operation, the media would be none the wiser and we'd have been spared the lurid tales of Kumbuka rampaging round the zoo. That said, I'm glad he's OK and it was nice to see footage of him on TV in all his glory.
It appears a gate was left open and there was no risk of the male escaping, not quite "at large" after all... Still, not good publicity and certainly not good practise...
The press coverage of this has been (predictably) dreadful. Random visitors giving us insights such as "it was like Jurassic Park"[/I! And in The Times we were told that RP has "at least six gorillas". "at least" ? Since when could you not accurately count gorillas? Gorillas, not Leaf-Cutter Ants!
Yes, i thought that was pretty bad too. Though not as bad as the predictably awful 'Sun' with its 'Psycho gorilla' headline and then linking a quite unconnected video/photo of him hitting the glass, with a breakout which as they described it was completely at odds with the real event.
