According to the South China Morning Post, visitors to the zoo pelted a 12-year-old female kangaroo with bricks and chunks of concrete, severely injuring her foot and rupturing her kidney. She died a few days later from her injuries.
The incident took place in the Fujian province’s Fuzhou Zoo. A few weeks later, one of the zoo’s young male kangaroos was injured in a similar incident.
Why would people throw bricks at these innocent animals? Apparently, they were trying to get the kangaroos to hop for them. It is not known whether anyone has been punished for this abhorrent behavior, but zoo officials have said they will install security cameras in hopes of deterring people from hurting animals in the future. They also say they will stuff and display the deceased kangaroo, although it’s not clear what point they are trying to make.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time that Chinese zoos have come under scrutiny. Their standards aren’t anywhere near those seen in Western zoos, with many animals being kept in horrible conditions. Last June, investors who were in the midst of a business dispute with a zoo intentionally dropped a donkey into the tiger enclosure, and you can probably guess what happened next.
Last year, visitors to an eastern China zoo were outraged when a middle-aged man wearing a suit threw palm-sized rocks at the kangaroos there in hopes of spurring them to hop around so he could take pictures of them. When the shocked bystanders asked him to stop, he tried to justify his actions by saying that he rarely goes to zoos and wanted to see the animal hop.
Animal mistreatment around the world
China isn’t the only country where animals are being mistreated. Activists took advantage of the recent Olympics being held in South Korea to shed light on the widespread practice in that country of farming dogs for human consumption. Hundreds of puppies are put into cramped quarters and forced to live in filthy conditions before being carted off for slaughter so that humans can eat them. The dog meat industry there is highly profitable, and dogs of all types are bred for meat, some of whom have been stolen right off the street. It’s believed that around 30 million dogs across Asia are killed each year for their meat.
In another animal cruelty incident, a group of Russian men filmed themselves crushing and killing a bear in the Siberian tundra by driving over it repeatedly in their off-road vehicles, poking it and shouting “Crush him!” as the poor animal tried to rise out of the snow. They posted the video on YouTube, but it has since been taken down and the men became the subject of a criminal investigation. Sadly, there is no shortage of similar stories to report on.
What has become of modern society that people want a photo op so badly that they don’t think twice about stoning an animal to death when it won’t pose the way they want it to? What kind of people run over animals with their vehicles so they can post the video online? These heinous acts take disrespecting nature to new lows, and it makes one wonder just how our fellow humans can become so depraved.
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