Zookeepers in China eat monkey meat

BEIJING - Zookeepers at a zoo in China are eating monkey and giraffe meat believing that these have extra nutritional value, a media report said.

The bizarre report came from a soon-to-be-opened zoo in Dongguan in China’s Guangdong province, where dead animals were reportedly given away as gifts or eaten by zoo workers, Global Times reported.

The Xiangshi Zoo, which plans to open in July, is an animal lover’s nightmare, the report said.

The tiger enclosure is smelly because it is never cleaned and their excrement is allowed to pile up while no animal keeper attends to the big cats.

Some wild animals purchased from zoos in other cities could not get acclimatised to the local weather and food. Thus, many giraffes, peacocks and monkeys sent from Beijing died.

“A giraffe transported from Beijing in December 2009 was weak when it arrived. It just lay in the cage and died, while two monkeys and several peacocks died two weeks ago,” a zoo employee was quoted as saying.

-Another employee said several animals that died at the zoo were either eaten by staff members or sent to friends as gifts, believing that wild animal meat has extra nutritional value.

“The workers at the zoo surely cannot eat the whole giraffe. Therefore, some of the giraffe meat was given to others, and we sometimes let tigers eat the meat as well,” the employee said.