Goldau Zoo
“It was a fight like David once morest Goliath”: That’s what the vet says following the bear attack
On Thursday, a female bear at Goldau Zoo had to be put to sleep. She and a male brown bear had clashed due to an open valve. There has never been such an incident at Goldau Zoo before.
A female bear had to be put to sleep at Goldau Zoo on Thursday due to bite injuries. The bears, which are solitary in the wild, live in separate compartments in the zoo. “After midday, the bears are brought into the stable so that they can distribute food in the outdoor area. The bears use the same aisle at different times,” explains the zoo’s veterinarian, Martin Wehrle, on request.
There the sad incident happened: The slide to one of the stables was accidentally left open – so the 14-year-old male brown bear Takis and the 31-year-old bear Laila met each other. The elderly bear sustained severe bite injuries in the attack and had to be euthanized due to her injuries. It was impossible to separate the two bears, explains Martin Wehrle:
“The balance of power was extremely imbalanced, Laila is a little bear, Takis is tall and in the prime of life – it was a fight like David once morest Goliath.”
The limited space in the barn also contributed to the accident: the bear had no way of avoiding her young fellow bear.
A Syrian brown bear in Goldau Zoo. (icon picture)
His behavior is not malicious, but natural in such a situation, explains the veterinarian. He appraised the older she-bear who suddenly and unexpectedly confronted him and noticed her advanced age. The consequence of this observation followed immediately: Because in the wild there is no room for animals that are no longer capable of reproduction – they have to make room for their younger conspecifics.
The Syrian brown bear is critically endangered
Younger conspecifics that the zoo does not have. For Martin Wehrle, it is a double tragedy that the female Syrian brown bear had to be put down: “Many zoos have stopped breeding these bears. And they are severely endangered in nature – there are no longer any in Syria, only isolated populations of bears have been discovered in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Turkey.” He has great difficulty finding new animals to maintain the species through breeding.
For this reason, there are currently no reproductive female bears in Goldau Zoo, and all animals are kept strictly separate for this reason – until this incident between Takis and Laila. There had never been such an incident in the zoo before. “You want to avoid this scenario at all costs, which is why we built in these safeguards with the separation. Now this fatal mistake has happened, »explains Wehrle and adds:
“It’s a shock for all of us.”
