The Horrors of the Calgary Zoo

The Horrors of the Calgary Zoo is a compilation of how this facility has murdered animals.

The Calgary Zoo and Captive Animal Crematorium

Special recognition goes to the concentration camp otherwise known as the Calgary Zoo and Captive Animal Crematorium, matching the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago for exceptional incompetence and maliciousness towards animals incarcerated for life for no fault of their own. Because of the viciousness by which this government-licensed animal murder facility and patronage worker dumping grounds ignores its blatant systemic animal welfare ineffectiveness and clear and repetitive evidence of a serious rift in their operation and mistreats animals of all species, we have literally hundreds of beautiful animals murdered at the Calgary Zoo to whom we provide dedication. I put them in reverse chronological order, to somehow lessen the pain.

Seven Humboldt penguins “mysteriously” drowned to death in their pool-prison (December 8, 2016). As deep divers, hyperactive, extremely gregarious, and accustomed to living in large colonies, penguins suffer egregiously and should never be imprisoned in zoos.

Two hundred cichilds fish, one-third of all those imprisoned including every adult, were murdered in the “rainforest exhibit” by incompetent prison guards who allowed poisonous chemical contaminants from poisoning the water (July 8–9, 2016).

The 12-year old North American river otter Logan drowned to death after getting entangled in one of the legs of a pair of trousers, which became the “instrument of death,” given to him by two miscreant, negligent, ignorant, incompetent keepers as a plaything, who retain their jobs, and was unable to breach the water’s surface for air (February 11, 2016). While the average North American river otter can hold its breath for up to eight minutes, it was too late for Logan.

The infant, five-month-old woodland caribou calf named Chocolate was murdered by the infliction of a “sudden severe neck trauma” (November 3, 2014).

Some 85 tilapia fish, nearly half of the total captives, were gassed to death in their tank by exorbitantly high ozone concentrations which the zoo director allowed to occur (circa September 10, 2014).

Fiona, the female Genton penguin, was murdered by incompetent handlers when she died of internal bleeding following a botched surgery to remove a foot-long stick that she had swallowed after it had unexplainably landed in the penguin jail cell — the zoo didn't issue a news release because the officials didn’t consider the death to be anything “out of the ordinary” (December, 2012).

From February to November, 2013, six penguins died from avian malaria and a fungal lung infections resulting from poor sanitation in the prison, King penguin Asa (February), Humbolt penguin Juntos (August), Humbolt penguin Guillermo (August), Humboldt penguin Eduardo (October), Gentoo penguin Akemi (October), and Gentoo penguin Houdini (November).

Four peacocks and scores of the tilapia and piranha fish died when the ill-prepared zoo, without adequate back-up power following a power outage resulting from flooding, could not maintain and regulate water quality and warm-climate temperatures for these tropical fish (circa June 21, 2013).

A great grey owl was murdered by human zoo handlers, who kept their jobs despite being careless and incompetent, when the imprisoned and terrified animal flew into a gate during a transfer between prison cells (September 26, 2012).

A keeper murdered a corn snake by heat stroke when the ignorant human being left a heat source blasting unattended near the snake (October 9, 2011). Another corn snake was literally starved to death, failure to follow proper feeding procedures being found to have led to the reptile’s death.

Two female Siberian tiger cub babies, weighing less than two pounds and being no larger than the palm of your hand, died, the first shortly after its birth (September 7, 2010) and the second the third night of her life (September 9, 2010), offspring of the ten-year-old Siberian tiger Katja mother, from severe head trauma resulting from the refusal of Katja to nurse the babies, perhaps because of the stress of incarceration, and “inexperience” in gently transporting her young by mouth, skills learned, not in prison, but by observing other mothers in a natural environment.

The 18-month-old female South American capybara named Adali, who came to the zoo on July 9 with her one-year-old mate Pakhi from the Buffalo Zoo, was literally crushed to death when the Calgary prison guard, while moving her from one enclosure to another, playfully closed a hydraulic door on her, leading to fatal injuries, for which murder the prison guard was given a two-day suspension (December 5, 2009). The zoo did not announce the murder; it was tipped off to animal welfare activists by a concerned zoo staffer. Capybara are a “traditional” Lenten food in South America, an enlightened manner by which Christians celebrate this pagan observance.

A mule deer died when he ran “into a fence” (November) and another was “found dead” by keepers (December) of “a mysterious broken neck,” in addition to two other mule deer deaths, all between September and December, 2009.

A large two-year-old male Turkmenian markhor, a spiral-horned wild goat-antelope, was strangled to death by a rope, a rope zoo “toy” suspended above a walkway which entangled the animal and effectively acted as a noose, hanging the poor animal, left in his jail cell by the City of Calgary union-protected, patronage-appointed concentration camp guards (July, 2009 Jan 2010? January, 2009).

Malti, the one-year-old Asian elephant baby who was born at the Calgary Zoo in 2007, died from elephant herpesvirus-caused internal bleeding and heart failure, just one day after blood tests confirmed her condition, waking up from a nap, struggling to get up, and then collapsing and dying within minutes, the same malady that has killed nearly a dozen young elephants in North American zoos over the past 20 years (November 1, 2008).

Forty-one (later reported as forty-five) cow nose stingrays suffocated to death, leaving only two alive, soon after the opening of an exhibit, which allows ignorant paying customers to pet them, from lack of oxygen in the pool-cell resulting from unprofessionally designed life-support systems, too many animals, and lack of keeper training and skill (May, 2008). The zoo reopened the stingray exhibit in December, 2008, and one of the ten new stingrays delivered to the jail died of a parasite in January, 2009, only several weeks later, adding another murder to the 2009 total, as the zoo president stated, “I think we need to be very frank here: our main expertise is not in fish here at the Calgary Zoo.” During the week of March 9, 2009, two more sting rays were murdered at the hands of the Calgary Murder Squad. The animals, meant to be part of a new shipment died after arriving at the zoo. The box and bag that carried the rays were damaged in transit, so the deaths, according to the zoo official, were stated flippantly as being “no surprise.” The young six-year-old female hippopotamus Hazina died within two days of being subjected to a viciously inhumane 29-hour truck-ride transfer from the Denver Zoo and Concentration Camp — the poor six-year-old girl had been lying in one position in her prison crate for too long, which severely restricted or stopped her blood circulation and caused death of her leg muscles and other tissues, leading to blood poisoning so that when she arrived in Calgary she was “in distress” and couldn’t stand (October 27, 2007). The Denver and Calgary concentration camps must have followed the Lincoln Park Zoo and Greenville Zoo instruction manuals for transporting large mammals in such a manner as to absolutely ensure that they suffer and die.

The life of the 22-year-old female western lowland gorilla, Donge, was ended after she had suffered for years from chronic diverticular (colon) disease, was rapidly losing weight and growing sicker, and it was found that she had another severe intestinal abscess and a large blood clot in her heart, her death being the fourth prematurely dying western lowland gorilla within only a year at the Calgary Zoo, an “unprecedented” sequence, their lifespans being in the 40’s and beyond, showing that “not even a shred of conservation value” exists there so that “there’s not any reason for [the zoo] keeping these animals” (August 10, 2007). The 26-year-old dominant female western lowland gorilla, Tabitha, after years of having seizures, could not be revived from a devastating series of them and died on April 14, 2007. Six weeks later, the 37-year-old female western lowland gorilla, Julia, the zoo’s oldest female gorilla, died from an aggressive liver infection (May 28, 2007). A twelve-day old female baby western lowland gorilla, too young to even have been named, died when the highest ranking female in the troop, Tabitha, prevented the inexperienced first-time mother Zuri, who had not learned mothering skills in the wild, having been hand-raised in captivity at the at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from nursing the baby (August 17, 2006).

The murder of Malti by zoo negligence isn’t the first elephant death at the Calgary Wild Animal Concentration Camp. Four years before her 2008 murder, the stressed Malti's mother, Maharani (as well as her captive mother Kamala), refused to nurse a new-born female calf baby, later named Keemaya, who was born November 16, 2004, who soon thereafter suffered an infection and suffered additional infections and digestive problems before falling into a coma and dying (December 7, 2004).

In 2007, a possum was crushed to death when a negligent keeper literally walked on it.

In 2005, a spider monkey was murdered by negligence. The tropical jungle animal was left outside in the frigid Calgary winter and sustained severe frostbite.

A joint investigation of the zoo by the U.S. Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums uncovered numerous other “unpublicized,” “unreported” murders of inmates at the hands of the Calgary Zoo, detailed in a 2010 scathing report of the zoo and its staff, noting, “The number of deaths due to human error is significantly higher than at other similar institutions.”

Among the murdered was a spider monkey who was fatally crushed by a hydraulic door. Another spider monkey died in 2005 from gangrene resulting from frostbite after this tropical jungle animal was let out and then left outside in the frigid Calgary winter weather. Four feather-tailed sugar gliders — mouse-like mammals — were mortally injured by keepers, either crushed to death after being stepped on (one each in 2007, 2008, and 2009) or crushed to death in a manual door (one in 2007). Several mule deer were killed or injured while handlers tried to capture them from capture or manual restraint related traumas, that is, in an unskilled “round-up,” for veterinary checks. Woodland caribou and musk oxen were repeatedly injured or killed either because of faulty exhibit design or interspecies aggression which obvious incompatibility was ignored by the zoo. African wild dogs were injured because of exhibit design or interspecies aggression.

A heart-wrenching total of 170 bats, entire colonies, were mass-murdered needlessly at the Calgary Concentration Camp over six years, Pallas bats (40 in 2004, 26 in 2005, 9 in 2006, 35 in 2007, 35 in 2008) and then Seba’s bats (25 in 2009) unbelievably brought into the same environment with the maintenance and design problems that killed the Pallas bats not having been corrected. These included improper climate in their enclosures, that is, excessive heat and humidity, and, believe it or not, piano wire strung across their cages as part of the exhibit to “enhance visitor experience” by keeping the shy bats in view of visitors, into which the bats would fly, leading to wing fractures and death. The report described this as “mal-adaptation to the piano wire.”

As detailed above, despite the report and promises of reform the murders at the Calgary Cemetary and Crematorium continued at an accelerating rate through 2016.