Furuvik Zoo in Sweden shoots, kills 3 chimpanzees after escape
One of the chimpanzees is injured and has not received veterinary care because no one can enter the building safely.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Four chimpanzees, one of which is injured, were on the loose inside a building at a Swedish zoo on Thursday, a day after they escaped from their enclosure. Three others have been shot dead.
Swedish officials and media said the injured animal has not received veterinary care because no one can enter the building at Furuvik Zoo for sure.
The chimpanzees are inside the monkey house, but staff have not been able to get the three back unharmed into their enclosure, zoo management said in a statement. The injured animal returned to its enclosure on its own.
“This means we cannot yet allow people to move freely in the park and we remain on full alert,” the zoo said.
The situation is “extremely serious and tragic, both for our animals and our employees,” the zoo said, adding that it did not know how the primates got out.
The animals got out of their enclosure on Wednesday, prompting the zoo to alert authorities. Three chimpanzees were shot dead by local staff, while the fourth was injured. The zoo told Swedish media that the animals had to be euthanized because there was not enough tranquilizers for all of them.
– Our focus right now is to get an overview of where the four are now so that we can start working on getting them back to their enclosures in a safe way, says Annika Troselius, spokeswoman for the group that runs the zoo, to Sveriges TV . SVT.
“We have to think about people’s lives and safety in the first place. No employees are allowed to work in close contact with animals like this.”
Furuvik Zoo is located near Gävle, 165 kilometers (100 miles) north of Stockholm. It is part of a theme park. According to the park’s website, it is also the only primate research station in the Nordics.
It is not the first time in recent months that animals have escaped from Swedish zoos for a short time. In October, a venomous king cobra escaped from its terrarium at a zoo in Sweden but returned on its own after a week. Daniel Roth at the Swedish Zoo Federation tells TT that he sees no connection between the events.