Thailand’s last gorilla doomed to life behind bars as ‘horror zoo’ defies calls to free her
- Zoo owners last year rejected an offer by Thai authorities to buy the 33-year-old gorilla, which has spent over 30 years caged in a Bangkok mall
- Activists, wildlife groups have campaigned for years, and nature sanctuaries have offered to house her to live out her years but to no avail
Bua Noi lies listlessly in the far corner of her enclosure, surrounded by concrete, bars and thick glass, with only a few ropes and a car tire for distraction during her 30-year confinement.
But the crowd of visitors at the privately run Pata Zoo on the roof of an old Bangkok mall wants to see more of the female gorilla. An employee lures Bua Noi (little lotus) with a sachet of milk. Finally she gets up, lumbers past the only patch of sunlight in the 10 by 20-metre pen and comes closer.
“[Her] vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to [her] there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.”
While the lines could have been written for Bua Noi, they reflect conditions in the entire Pata Zoo. The gloomy enclosures and cages where hundreds of monkeys, reptiles and birds languish are often referred to as the “horror zoo”.
