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The chimps were kept off display that day but the zoo opened as normal.
The incident occurred about a year after theinner west’s baboon breakout,when a male baboon on his way to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for a vasectomy escaped along with two females. In 2014,water buffalo belted down Newtown’s King Street for two kilometres afterbusting out of a film set.
The deadly Mogo lion breakout
In 2009,a nine-year-old lioness called Jamelia,who lived in an off-display enclosure at Mogo Zoo on NSW’s south coast,escaped due to a “zookeeper error”.
About 35 elderly visitors were on the grounds at the time of the 190-kilogram lion’s escape.
The founder of the zoo,Sally Padey,bottle-fed Jamelia since she was a cub. She made the call for a marksman to shoot the lion.
General manager of the zoo John Appleby said at the time that tranquillisers take eight to 10 minutes to take effect and risk agitating the animal and making the situation more dangerous.
“Ten minutes with a lion on the loose can do a lot of damage,” Appleby said at the time. “You don’t even want to know what the outcome would be.”
In 2020,zookeeper Jennifer Brown from Shoalhaven Zoo was airlifted to Sydney with lacerations to her neck and head after she wasmauled by two lions. Brown had entered their enclosure for a routine clean.
Adelaide Zoo evacuated
An orangutan residing at Adelaide Zoo made world headlines in 2009 after escaping from her enclosure,causing an evacuation on a busy Mother’s Day Sunday.
The ape,named Karta,shoved a stick into the wires of her enclosure,short-circuiting the electric fence,and piled a mass of sticks and bracken against the wires so she could climb to freedom.
But Karta didn’t venture far and soon returned to her enclosure after her spectacular escape.
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Historical escapes from Taronga
In 1990,a newly arrived clouded leopard slunk out of its exhibit thanks to a broken wire. The endangered Asian cat spent the day hunting pigeons on the rocky exterior of the bear and lion pits before keepers managed to tranquillise it and return the leopard to its enclosure.
In 1973,then director of Taronga claimed thieves had stolen two freshwater crocodiles. The next day they were discovered on zoo grounds – they had scaled a 2.5 metre fence,a feat the director thought was not “physically possible”.
In the mid-1950s,ex-circus chimpanzee Koko fled from her enclosure and,before she was captured,jumped into the office manager’s Ford Prefect car.
In 1946,frightened guests were herded into an empty seal enclosure after a Bengal tiger broke out. Authorities were forced to shoot the tiger.
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