Moving day at Chinese zoo a cagey business
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Hate having to pack before travelling? It's nothing when compared to preparing giant zoo animals for a move.
A zoo may need to place a cage near the animal two to three years before a move, said Huang Zhihong, deputy director of the technological exchange department at Guangzhou Zoo in Guangdong province.
Take an elephant as an example. To get it to step into the cage without stress, preparations can be lengthy if it has not been trained from childhood.
“An elephant has good memory and intelligence, so it would know that it is about to move when it sees the cage,” Huang said.
Guangzhou Zoo placed a cage near Manling, a female Asian elephant, more than a year before moving her to a zoo in Guiyang, Guizhou province, in May to meet a male partner in the hope of conceiving.
Keepers placed food at the cage entrance to lure Manling in. They closed the door only a little at first and shut it a bit more later to let her know it was safe inside.
“This is the most difficult part in getting the animal into the cage,” said Li Youlong, head of the animal management department at Yunnan Wild Animal Park in Kunming.
There are three options – luring animals with their favourite foods, driving them inside a cage, or using an anaesthetic. But because drugs can harm an animal’s health, they are seldom used, Li said.
While preparing a civet cat for a move, keepers at the park in Kunming worked hard to get it locked in a cage. But once inside, it lay on the ground without moving, “playing dead” to fool them. When the keepers hurried to open the gate to rescue the precious animal, it escaped.
After getting an animal into a cage, further steps call for a great deal of energy, with transportation involving many people.
“Animals live in cages that are based on their size and living requirements,” Huang said. An animal that lives in water, like a hippopotamus, must be sprayed with water during a move.
An opening at the top of a cage is needed for animals such as giraffes, which can grow to 6 metres. The team transporting a giraffe must choose a route that avoids bridges with low clearings, as well as underpasses. Detours are needed sometimes.
Animal-truck drivers must also avoid steep slopes and driving too fast.
Guangzhou Zoo exchanged one giraffe for another with Kunming earlier this year to prevent inbreeding. The animal was fed mulberry, banyan and bauhinia leaves during the trip, Li said.
He added that bananas and sugarcane are elephants’ favourites, hippos like carrots, and rhinos have a taste for carrots and cooked soybeans.
Animals from different areas can have different tastes.
For example, a giraffe from Shandong province came to love green Chinese onions, a local specialty. When it was transferred to a zoo in Beijing, it munched tasty onions all the way.
Xu Linmu, a 75-year-old retired worker from a zoo in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, recalled moving animals nearly 30 years ago, saying, “There was laughter throughout the trip, but it was very exhausting.”
He was part of a team taking pandas from Chengdu in Sichuan province to Nanjing. During the two-day trip, team members lived with the pandas in a railway wagon, talking to them and feeding them.
“We became friends,” said Xu with a big smile as he recounted the experience.
Animals being transported to zoos in cities can go by truck, ship or plane. Some animals, such as tigers and monkeys, can be transported by air in double-locked cages in the hold.
Cages must be placed well to avoid weight imbalance during a flight, and oxygen must be provided for the animals.
Li, from the animal park in Kunming, said it costs significantly more to transport a giraffe or a rhino than it does a human. “The animals can also be affected by travel sickness in cars or planes, just like humans.”
Sometimes, animals are given sedatives to keep them calm and to avoid sickness. On other occasions, when the animals do not have serious vomiting, keepers will talk to them to comfort them.
A zoo must obtain travel permits in advance from the authorities – sometimes even from the central government for protected animals, such as the South China Tiger, said Huang from Guangzhou.
Hu Chunmei, who works for a non-governmental organisation in Beijing whose mission is to protect animals’ welfare, said: “There have been many cases involving the illegal transportation of wild animals in recent years.”
She suggested that authorities should release regulations detailing the requirements for transporting animals, including facilities and services.
