Everyone Who Cares About Animals Thinks London Zoo Needs to Cancel These Events
London Zoo’s stubborn insistence on not cancelling its “Zoo Lates” events – in which around 6,000 visitors pour into the zoo in the evening, during the animals’ usual resting hours, drink alcohol, sing and shout along to music – reveals the institution’s true priorities. Like all zoos, it’s more concerned with making money than safeguarding the animals it keeps captive.
Allegations that one visitor poured beer on a tiger, another fell and “accidentally” punched a bird and yet another asked a staff member “Which penguin can I fight?” are apparently not enough for the zoo to concede that these events are a bad idea.
Our director, Mimi Bekhechi, summed it up neatly:
“Plying thousands of people with alcohol on what is actively promoted by the zoo as a ‘wild night out’ might be a good fundraiser for the London Zoo, but it doesn’t put the animals’ needs first”.
Now, the UK’s other leading animal-protection groups, the RSPCA, the Born Free Foundation, the Captive Animals’ Protection Society, Animal Aid, OneKind and Viva!, have all joined our call for London Zoo to cancel these distressing events and signed our joint letter to the Zoological Society of London’s director.
Thousands of compassionate people have also signed the online version of our letter. If you agree that there’s no way to justify adding to the misery of animals in zoos in this way, please add your name here:
