An escaped zoo animal can be extremely dangerous. When Tatiana the tiger escaped from a California zoo in 2007, she killed one man and injured two more before being shot by police. So it makes sense that a zoo in a highly populated city like Tokyo would want to be prepared, what's slightly odd is just what form that preparation takes.
Last week, staff at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo practiced capturing escaped animals by chasing one of their colleagues wearing a not very realistic gorilla suit.
Visitors watched as helmet-wearing keepers surrounded the "gorilla", who pantomimed panic and bewilderment at being out in the wide world. Staff then pretended to tranquilise the animal, which swooned and collapsed to the ground. They then poked it with a stick to make sure she was unconscious, and bundled theh "gorilla" into a truck and took it back to captivity.
Tokyo zoos conduct these costumed animal escape drills every other year but, as this chart shows, they're never much more realistic than the gorilla.
Onlookers weren't particularly impressed, one posted on Twitter: "Ueno Zoo's escape drill wasn't tense at all."
Another wrote, "The gorilla escape drill was so laid back! Made me laugh."
Meanwhile, in more serious animal news, a money found on a highway in Sichuan province bit a firefighter on the leg.
[Gif via Kotaku]
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