Sad, not to call it absurd and incompetent. Loro Parque is a large zoo in Spain, which cares little for the mental health of the animals that it hosts. As a proof of its incompetence, we will describe what happened days ago.

According to the direction of the Zoo, some employees – without telling others – were making a mock escape of a gorilla and his capture by the team of veterinarians and keepers, but they forgot to warn other veterinarians. When an handler undercover as a  gorilla pretended that he had fled and was being chased by a simulated team, a veterinarian who had not been warned launched a paralyzing dart in the fake gorilla, with a high dose of anesthetic that put the fake gorilla to sleep immediately.

Threatened by  a possible respiratory arrest, the handler was rushed to the University Hospital of the Canary Islands, where they managed to wake him.

Can you trust a zoo with dozens of large animals that makes such a clumsy operation? Would you take your family to this place, where a veterinarian does not know to differentiate a fake from a real gorilla?

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International