Good grief. As a kid I loved going to the zoo because it was the only way to see exotic animals in real life. Many zoos do a fine job of taking care of the animals and it continues to be a great way for many to be exposed to these magnificent animals but this story doesn't come as a complete surprise to me. When I was in Africa, I heard too many stories about lions and other rare animals that were rescued due to similar poor conditions. Besides eating meat - and a lot of it - they also need to eat bone but that doesn't always happen. Another all too common problem is zoos selling older animals to be used for "big game" hunting. Wealthy "hunters" will pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot one of the Big 5 in the wild. If they're an especially bad shot and can't hit a relatively tame animal, they'll even drug the big cats to make it easier.
What a horrible loss.
Eleven rare Siberian tigers have died at a wildlife park in a startling case that activists say hints at unsavory practices among some zoos and animal farms in China: They are overbreeding endangered animals in the hopes of making illicit profit on their carcasses.
The deaths of the tigers occurred in the past three months at the zoo in China's frigid northeast, officials and state media said Friday. Reports said the tigers starved to death, having been fed nothing but chicken bones, while a zoo manager said unspecified diseases killed the animals.
Either way, the animals had been ill-kept and ill-fed. The Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo has struggled financially, even withholding pay from staff, said a woman in charge of corporate planning for the zoo who would only give her surname, Wang. The zoo had been up for auction for some time without any bidders, she said.
