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

The perils of free-ranging lemurs:

Girl attacked at zoo

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

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....

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

Although this area has no lemurs I was very closely followed by a squirrel monkey during my time in Blackpool's Amazon walk through.

It was only when I got outside I realised that it was not me that it was interested in but the banana it could smell in my lunch box. It was something I didn't think of when I entered the enclosure.

I've only been to South Lakes once but I thought the policy of free-ranging lemurs entering the public eating areas was a disaster waiting to happen.

 

walk through at blackpool? i though it was a run through i was ushered along so quickly

 

You must have gone on a bad day then as i`ve always end up talking with the staff about the various about how the exhibits working.As a result it normaly takes be about 30 mins just to reach the exit.

 

I thought it probably was, but other forum members may have not been aware of the continuing criticisms of the park.

As for improving the reputation... I would guess a change of management?

 

Surely there are public health issues here? After all dogs aren't allowed in food shops etc etc. I don't know if Lemurs cover their feet and hands with their own urine like squirrel monkeys do but it still sounds like a health hazard having them running around near food, quite apart from any actual aggressive actions.