Zoo stories

Courtesy Amit, this story says visitors to the Byculla zoo have been pelting animals with stones:

The animals in the city zoo, (Veermata Jijabai Bhonsale Garden), at Byculla, are being harassed by insensitive visitors.
The visitors pick stones from heaps of rubble and raw material left behind by the BMC contractor repairing the zoo roads, and pelt them at the animals.

Why would anyone do this? The saddest stories come out of Indian zoos; staff report that visitors have offered monkeys lit cigarettes and razor blades, pushed plastic bags into animals' cages, poked them with sticks, shouted in order to wake sleeping babies so that they can "perform".

I'm thinking we should round up these guys and ask the London Zoo whether they'd like to make their Human Exhibit permanent--and throw away the key, yeah?

Oh, on the subject of poking cigarette butts in at animals? You're creating a Marlboro Chimp.

Zoo Keepers at the Qinling Wild Animal Zoo in Xi'An in China are encouraging a 26-year-old chimpanzee called Ai Ai to quit smoking.
Ai Ai, which means "love love" in Mandarin, has been smoking for 15 years. She started by picking up tourists' cigarette butts.