At Salzburg Zoo, a 33-year-old German zookeeper was attacked and killed by a 1.8-ton rhino in front of her husband.
The 34-year-old husband was also an animal keeper in the rhino enclosure. He was seriously injured on Tuesday morning when he tried to come to his wife’s aid, Austrian police said. The woman was born in Munich but lived in Austria. The man is Austrian.
The zookeeper was injured in the chest and, despite attempts at resuscitation, died at the scene of the accident inside the rhino enclosure, as the zoo’s managing director, Sabine Grebner, reported in a press conference. According to Grebner, her husband suffered a broken femur when he guided the attacking animal away from his wife and outside. He was taken to a hospital.
Experienced nurse
“We are of course deeply dismayed and shocked,” said Grebner. The keeper had worked at Salzburg Zoo since 2014 and, like her husband, was considered very experienced in dealing with rhinos. “She was always very careful and very thoughtful and had an extremely good feel for the animals,” said the zoo’s boss.
The woman was killed in the morning hours when she wanted to put a stick on the female rhino named Yeti to protect against insects. This is routine work that is carried out daily between March and October, said Grebner.
It is still unclear why the 30-year-old animal reacted like this. All four rhinos in the zoo are used to being cared for and will allow themselves to be brushed, come into the indoor enclosure when called or have blood drawn without anesthesia.
Uncomplicated handling
Yeti is a 30-year-old rhino that was born in an African animal reserve and has lived at Salzburg Zoo since 2009. “It is our most cooperative rhino,” said Grebner. Normally, the interaction between keepers and this female was very uncomplicated.
After the fatal incident, the zoo now wants to investigate whether the animal might have been disturbed in the stable during the night of Tuesday.
The zoo also wants to examine how the care of the rhinos can be changed or improved and what additional safety measures may need to be taken. Like other zoos, Salzburg Zoo is equipped with weapons, anesthesia guns and pepper sprays for emergencies. But in such a sudden attack with direct contact between animals and humans, “no weapon will help them,” said Grebner.
Rhinoceros will not be euthanized
The executive director indicated that Yeti, as a representative of an endangered species, will not be euthanized. The animal is also not isolated from its peers around the zoo because the care routine must be maintained. The Red Cross offered psychological support to employees and relatives of the victims.
According to Grebner, no such attack by a rhino had ever occurred in German-speaking zoos. However, the animal protection organization Peta pointed out in a statement that there have been fatal accidents involving big cats in Germany and Switzerland in recent years.
The organization called for an end to keeping wild animals in zoos. The “unspecies-unfriendly keeping conditions” are inevitably associated with animal suffering and often lead to serious behavioral disorders, said Peta representative Yvonne Würz.
Fatal incidents rare
However, fatal incidents involving animals in zoos are rare. In August 2022, for example, a large antelope speared a zoo employee on the Swedish island of Öland. The man wanted to bring the animal into the stable.
In September 2013, a tiger at the Münster Zoo killed a keeper who overlooked an open sliding door. In August 2012, an animal keeper in Cologne died after being bitten in the neck by a Siberian tiger. She had forgotten to lock the big cat up before cleaning the enclosure.
In May 2007, in Berlin’s Friedrichsfelde Zoo, a keeper was crushed to death on a fence by a 350-kilogram musk ox. Here, too, the enclosure door was not properly closed.
2023-09-13 00:57:17
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