At 7:20 a.m. on Saturday a jaguar escaped from its enclosure at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans.
The 3-year-old jaguar managed to kill four alpaca, an emu and a fox before being sedated. Thankfully there were no human injuries and the staff was able to get the feline back into its enclosure, officials said at a press conference Saturday.
This is Valerio in video posted online by @sandiegozoo back in 2016. The Jaguar, born here in March 2015, was sent to Audubon Zoo in New Orleans in 2017. Today he escaped and killed 4 alpaca, an emu and a fox in other habitats before being sedated by zoo’s staff. @CBS8 pic.twitter.com/LTaWrzBoZt
— Steve Price (@SteveNews8) July 15, 2018
“In over a 100-year period, we’ve never had any incident like this,” said Ron Forman, the president and CEO of Audubon Nature Institute at press conference on Saturday. “This is by far the biggest tragedy we’ve had.”
The zoo also stated that they have practices in place that are meant to prevent these incidents, but apparently they are not as well trained as Japanese zoo keepers who practice this kind of thing (see below).