The lonely male capybara at Calgary zoo
Well, I hate to have to report this, especially after how excited I was for all you Calgarians when you got your capybara pair. I am always excited when some of my kind have the opportunity to teach more humans about us wonderful capybaras. But after just six months, things went horribly wrong for poor little Adali, right as she was reaching adulthood. She was crushed by a hydraulic gate! I can’t even say that without eeping. What a horrible fate for my poor cousin.
The zoo has said that the “accident” was a result of human error. But the person who killed Adali got only a two day suspension. How is that justice? The only good thing is he or she won’t be allowed to work with animals again.
Here are a couple of links to articles about this:
I was unaware of capybaras until I saw the news article. I Googled capybaras (“…world’s largest rodent…”) to find out what the heck they were and stumbled across some YouTube videos of you, big fella Caplin. Once I learned what capybaras were and such, I was more saddened over the senseless death. I suppose what got me was the fact that they are large creatures and it wasn’t a quick death … like stepping on a spider (not that I condone that sort of thing, but little home invaders tend to creep me out in the worse way ;p).
At any rate, RIP Adali. A sad day indeed.
The only being more evil than the usual animal enemies of the capybara (the evil killer Alpacca, the evil killer Boa, the evil killer Crocodile, the evil killer Panther) is the greatest enemy of probably any animal in this world: The evil (or in the Calgary case: stupid) killer Human 🙁
Really heartbreaking.
What a terrible way to die! I feel especially bad for the male capybara, who looks really depressed in the video. I bet he had to witness the whole thing and now he has capybara nightmares. Poor little guy.
This infuriates me. A two-day suspension for crushing an animal to death through negligence? You’d think *not* killing the residents would be a prerequisite for working at a zoo. But no.
I bet that person killed the rare goat, the 48 sting-rays and baby elephants as well! That zoo sounds sketchy!