Thai cops accuse zoo of monkeying around
Date: 12-Aug-04
Country: THAILAND
Colonel Wisit Nantawong of the Forestry Police said the Safari World amusement park, where the highly endangered apes used to stage mock Thai kick-boxing bouts, had told them 41 orang-utans had died.
However, officers suspect monkey business, and think the orang-utans - most of them very young - have quietly been moved elsewhere.
"We don't believe what they said. We are interrogating them to find whether these apes really died because we've never seen their carcasses," Wisit said. "We hope to wrap up the investigation by this week."
Police "confiscated" the zoo's 110 orang-utans after the smuggling allegations surfaced last month but the animals had to stay in Safari World's cages because police did not have another suitable home for them.
A later search of the premises revealed only 69 apes - begging the question of where the other 41 had gone.
A spokeswoman for the zoo, which insists all its orang-utans were born under its own roof, declined to comment.
Wild orang-utans are now only found in jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia. Forestry officials from Jakarta visited Bangkok last week to press for DNA tests to determine the apes' provenance.
