Photo: Zoo Miami
“The tapir just compromised [the enclosure],” Ron Magill, director of communications at Zoo Miami, told PEOPLE. “It climbed out the back side of the moat.”
Magill added that there was “nothing nefarious about the animal getting out” of the habitat, which had never been breached in the past.
The tapir is a new arrival to the zoo, he added, and was likely not acclimated to the noise from the lawnmower.
In a post on Facebook, the Florida zoo said the adult male Malayan tapir jumped out of his habitat shortly before 8 a.m.
The animal was quickly contained in a secure area, Zoo Miami officials said, where the zoo’s Animal Health team, in coordination with its Animal Science team, successfully tranquilized the animal and transported him to a secure holding space about an hour later.
The zoo said that the animal did not pose a threat to the general public while it was out of its enclosure.
Tapirs are mammals that are akin to “pigs with trunks,“according toNational Geographic. Related to horses and rhinoceroses, the Malayan tapir can weigh as much as 800 pounds.
While tapirs are generally considered to be gentle, the animal can be unpredictable in behavior and has been responsible for human attacks in the past.
In 2013, a Brazilian tapirseriously injureda 2-year-old girl and her mother at the Dublin Zoo.
The Zoo Miami tapir’s escape comes on the heels of other alarming zoo incidents.
On Feb. 2, a rare Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco went missing from his exhibit at New York City’s Central Park Zoo, according to zoo officials.
“The exhibit had been vandalized and the stainless steel mesh cut,“the New York zoo said in a statementat the time. “Upon notification, a team was mobilized to search for the bird.”
Since his escape, Flaco has taken up residence in Central Park, and zoo officials are no longer trying to catch him since he has successfully been able to hunt for food, despite initial concerns.
The Dallas Zoo has reported several missing animals since the start of 2023, beginning with a4-year-old clouded leopard named Nova, who first went missing on Jan. 13 —and is now safely back at the zoo.
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Also in February,Houston Zoo officials found a four-inch gapin the mesh of a pelican habitat at its Children’s Zoo, but all animals were found secure.
source: people.com
