Zoo de Zurich
A tiger devours a stork in front of the visitors
The bird has accidentally entered the enclosure of the wild beasts. The “brutal” incident is added to a series of accidents involving wild animals in captivity.
After the incident, only one stork was visible in a nest usually occupied by two storks (illustration image).
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A stork was killed and devoured by a tiger on Sunday afternoon at the Zurich zoo, after having accidentally stolen in the enclosure of the wild beasts. The incident took place in front of many visitors, including children, according to “Blick». The bird was one of the young storks born recently in a nest located around the zoo, adds the “Daily Anzeiger».
The incident started in an apparently harmless way. “At the beginning, it was harmless: the tiger played a little with the stork, which perhaps explains why the bird did not flee immediately,” says an eyewitness. This initial phase quickly tilted towards a fatal outcome when the feline jumped on its prey.
The stork devoured “piece per piece”
The tiger then devoured the stork “piece by piece”, according to the story of the witness, which describes the scene as “very brutal”. Despite the violence of the attack, the children present showed no particular sign of distress. “No child has cried or shouted: they understood that it was nature,” report the leaders of the zoo.
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The Zurich Zoo regularly hosts storks that settle there voluntarily. Sunday afternoon, after the incident, only one stork was visible in a nest usually occupied by two birds.
The cases of storks killed by captive wild beasts remain extremely rare in Switzerland. However, the Zurich Zoo has experienced other incidents involving its tigers. In 2020, a tiger had Mortally injured a goalkeeper in this same establishment. A year earlier, it was a crocodile who had attacked a caregiver.
The same type of incident in other Swiss zoos
Among the more distant events, at the Basel zoo, a wild dog fell into the lions enclosure, and a hippopotamus killed a zebra. At the Bern Zoo, a male bear killed one of his cubs. His mother had brought the body back into the enclosure.
A precedent somewhat similar to the Sunday incident occurred in 2017 in the Netherlands, where a Wallaby had inadvertently introduced into the enclosure of the lions of a zoo. The wild beasts had only made a bite.
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